Indonesia corruption body under attack: activists - Yahoo! News

Image by Mikey aka DaSkinnyBlackMan via Flickr

JAKARTA (AFP) – The future of Indonesia's powerful anti-corruption commission has been put under threat by what activists say is a concerted campaign to shut down progress made against entrenched graft.

Lawmakers are expected to pass a law next week that would strip the independent Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) of the authority to prosecute -- a power that has seen it put away high profile politicians and officials.

The law, part of a rash of legislation before the end of the current parliament's term, would leave the KPK solely as an investigator while the corruption-tainted attorney general's office (AGO) would be left to prosecute.

"The grand scenario is the government is trying to weaken the KPK," Indonesia Corruption Watch secretary general Teten Masduki told AFP.

The law is likely a reaction to successes that have seen the KPK-linked Corruption Court achieve a 100 percent conviction rate in a country known as one of the world's most corrupt, Masduki said.

"I think everyone knows the DPR (parliament) is always reluctant to go with the process of anti-corruption. They don't really support the KPK."

The looming legal changes come as the KPK was paralysed by the suspension this week of two of its remaining four commissioners after they were named suspects in a police graft probe.

The suspension of deputy commissioners Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Rianto comes just months after the arrest of KPK chief Antasari Azhar for murder and is the latest chapter in what activists have called a war between the KPK and top police officers.

They have repeatedly denied they are out to weaken the KPK, in spite of reports that senior police officers have been angered by the commission investigating their own members.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has created a team to fill the gaps in the KPK's leadership, but Masduki said it appeared the president had soured on the commission after one of his relatives, former central bank deputy governor Aulia Pohan, was sentenced to a jail term of four-and-a-half years for graft.

"When the police were trying to investigate the KPK, the president didn't try to stop them. I think he pushed the police to investigate the (two) commissioners without enough evidence," Masduki said, adding that it remained to be seen if the selection of replacement KPK heads would be fair.

Political analyst Wimar Witoelar said that while the KPK remains hated by many politicians and police, Yudhoyono -- who goes by the initials SBY and was re-elected this year with a strong mandate thanks in part to the KPK's strides against corruption -- remained committed to tackling graft.

"If SBY really wanted to let the KPK suffer, he wouldn't have intervened with the regulation in-lieu-of-law," he said, referring to the formation of the team to pick replacement KPK commissioners.

Indonesia is ranked the world's 126th cleanest country by Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International, on an equal pegging with countries such as Uganda and Ethiopia.

Corruption Fighters Rouse Resistance in Indonesia

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia, a country that has long been regarded as one of the world’s most corrupt, has won praise for combating graft in recent years. Leading the charge has been a single powerful government institution — one whose successes have drawn fierce opposition that now threatens its existence.

Armed with tools like warrantless wiretaps, the Corruption Eradication Commission confronted head-on the endemic corruption that remains as a legacy of President Suharto’s 32-year-long kleptocracy. Since it started operating in late 2003, the commission has investigated, prosecuted and achieved a 100-percent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft related to government procurements and budgets.

Local reporters camp daily outside the commission’s imposing eight-story building here, where high-ranking businessmen, bureaucrats, bankers, governors, diplomats, lawmakers, prosecutors, police officials and other previously untouchable members of Indonesian society have been made to discover a phenomenon new to this country: the perp walk.

One of Indonesia’s most famous rock bands, Slank, even performed outside the building last year to show support. The band took aim at members of Parliament, the institution generally considered the country’s most corrupt, by singing: “Who draws up laws? Draft bills for bucks.”

According to Transparency International, a Berlin-based private organization dedicated to curbing corruption, the modest progress Indonesia has made against corruption in the past half decade has resulted from the commission’s investigations and reforms inside a single ministry, the Ministry of Finance.

But now the nation’s Parliament, police force and attorney general’s office have increasingly been caught in the cross hairs of the anticorruption commission’s investigations, and members of those bodies are trying to undermine the commission, according to commission officials and watchdog groups.

The attacks against the commission grew so intense that Indonesia’s newly re-elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, summoned Indonesia’s top law enforcement officials on a recent morning. Sounding sometimes like a marriage counselor, he told them to avoid “friction” through better “communication” and “respect.”

The meeting shone a rare, public spotlight on the particular difficulties of fighting corruption here. At stake, experts say, is the very survival of the anticorruption commission, universally referred to as K.P.K., the initials of its name in Indonesian.

“It’s now a very dangerous time for the K.P.K.,” said Teten Masduki, the secretary general of Transparency International’s chapter in Indonesia. “Whether it’s the police, attorney general’s office or Parliament, there is a systematic agenda to destroy the K.P.K.”

Some critics say that the commission’s powers are too draconian and that defendants receive inadequate protection at a special Corruption Court where they are tried. Even Mr. Yudhoyono, who has made fighting corruption a main theme of his administration, said recently that the commission “seems to be accountable only to God.”

Haryono Umar, one of the commission’s four vice chairmen, said that its investigators were merely following the 2002 law that created it, and that the commission was accountable to Parliament and other government agencies.

“According to the law, corruption is an extraordinary crime, so that’s why it should be handled by extraordinary means,” Mr. Haryono said.

“But because we are handling corruption very aggressively,” he said, “many people are not happy with the K.P.K.” However, he denied that other law enforcement officials were among them.

Likewise, Inspector Gen. Nanan Soekarna, a spokesman for the national police, said, “We have good relations with the K.P.K.”

Current and former commission officials said relations with police officials and prosecutors started off well but grew strained in the past year after corruption investigators began focusing on the police and the attorney general’s office, long considered among the most corrupt institutions here. Last year, a former high-ranking police official was sentenced to two years in prison for misappropriating funds while serving as ambassador to Malaysia.

“Now our relations are no good because the K.P.K. started picking on their high officials,” said Erry Riyana Hardjapamekas, a former deputy chairman at the commission. “We suspect each other.”

More recently, an active high-ranking police official, Susno Duadji, was wiretapped by the commission and caught asking for a $1 million bribe. In an interview with Tempo, the country’s most respected magazine, the police official said he knew he was being wiretapped and played along with the caller; in an allusion to the anticorruption commission and the police, he said, “It’s like a gecko challenging a crocodile.”

The police, through leaks to the news media, threatened to arrest several commission officials on corruption charges of their own and in a bizarre case involving their former chairman, Antasari Azhar. In May, Mr. Antasari was arrested and accused of ordering the murder of a prominent businessman who was blackmailing him over an affair with their mutual love interest, a golf caddy, according to the news media.

Watchdog groups say the anticorruption commission is facing a potentially more effective, though passive, challenge from Parliament.

The challenge comes in the form of delays in passing new legislation governing the commission and the court, after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that the law establishing the two was unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court gave the government until the end of 2009 to create a new law.

Watchdog groups say that Parliament has been sitting on the proposed bill in a strategy to kill the anticorruption commission. Transparency International rates Parliament — nine of whose members have been convicted by the special corruption court since 2007, mostly for bribery — as Indonesia’s most corrupt institution.

Gayus Lumbuun, a lawmaker in the committee reviewing the proposed bill, said its passage was possible before the end of the year. “We agree with T.I.,” he said in an interview, referring to Transparency International’s rating. “But we hope that T.I. also sees that there are members of Parliament who are ethical and trying to do good.”

Last year, Mr. Gayus led other lawmakers in threatening to sue Slank, the rock band, for singing about legislators who “draft bills for bucks.” But they dropped the idea after one of their own was arrested for bribery around the same time, and later sentenced to eight years in prison.

Even if the bill passes, the anticorruption effort could be weakened, according to Danang Widojoko, a coordinator at Indonesia Corruption Watch, a private organization. He said the bill would strip the commission of its prosecutorial authority and make the court less independent.

If Parliament fails to pass the bill, the president could extend the life of the anticorruption commission and court by passing a special regulation to be reviewed by Parliament. Mr. Yudhoyono was elected to his second term by a large margin. But he also has longtime supporters in business in a country where companies still depend largely on government contracts, experts said.

“If he’s serious about combating corruption, he’ll make sure the K.P.K. survives,” said Mr. Teten of Transparency International. “That would make the people happy, but I don’t know about the others.”