CONFRONTING CORRUPTION: MOVING FROM VIGILANCE TO ACTION

BY TETEN MASDUKI, Coordinator, Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW)
2005 Ramon Magsaysay Foundation Awardee for Public Service
Presented at the 2005 Magsaysay Awardees’ Lecture Series
Magsaysay Center, Manila, 30 August 2005

The main actors of corruption are the government and private sectors, and society always becomes its victim. During the New Order when Soeharto was in power, corruption was not secondary but it has become the main part of the activities of government. Political patronage in business dominated the use of Indonesia's abundant natural resources; the economy and government contracts fell into the hands of people who had ties with the authority. Meantime, people paid a high price in exchange for the low quality of public services.

Cases of corruption succeeded during the period and were made possible because President Soeharto controlled the economic and political systems; accountability was non-existent. There was almost no opposition and consequently, there were no checks and balances because the authority controlled political parties, general elections, the parliament and judiciary. At the same time, there was no social control since civil society, especially the media, and student organizations experienced remarkable militarization.

Ever since President Soeharto stepped down, subsequent governments have been established in more democratic ways. Corruption was transformed from an 'oligarchy' to a 'multiparty' corruption, which was no longer centered to the presidential palace but spread out to the parliament and the districts along with changes in the political structure following General Elections in 1999. In brief, the reality is that the change from an authoritarian government to a more democratic one did not lessen corruption. In fact, corruption became a handicap for reform in various areas.

State-oriented reform

Since then, the agenda of abolishing corruption has become a policy of governments after Soeharto. Unfortunately, this agenda is always concentrated on just giving instructions to reform government institutions, with the assumption that corruption represents a fundamental failure of government. Corruption is viewed as the cause of failure of all branches of government-the judicial system, parliamentary system, and budgeting system and, of course, the bureaucracy. It is possible that there is some truth to this assumption, and that government reform succeeds in nations where there are no problems of representing, and there is the existence of, democratic organizations, and that the leaders need to have the political will to create the prosperity for their people.

However, the general public as the main victim of corruption was ignored in the agenda of corruption eradication. In our national judicial system there is no space for society to charge the corrupters in courts of justice. Neither is there any method for class actions or any act which provides people with a legal standing. The fact is that though people actually suffer from widespread corruption, resistance to anticorruption action is a potential threat.

Cries and complaints into action

A corrupt act or practice in Indonesia is not a misdemeanor. It is done out in the open. The act of asking for a reward or extortion by officers of the bureaucracy has become common knowledge, and sometimes they are done in a vulgar manner. Expansion of projects and contracts for government services and goods, from work volume to expenditures, are padded up to three times the standard, and this has become the routine. All government officials show off their unusual wealth, and their extravagant life styles apparently do not come from what they formally earn from a government salary. Finding a corrupter in Indonesia is not a special case, but finding an honest and truthful government official is something very unusual.

All of this happens because corruption is low risk but highly beneficial. The possibility that the wrongdoer will be arrested, indicted, convicted and sent to prison is very small. This is because one could pay off the law enforcement officer. Sometimes society even looks up to this person as a generous man who would donate some of his wealth to someone belonging to the low-socio economic status, most likely to cover up for his dirty wrongdoings.

Yet, incidences of corruption have become a source of cries and complaints from our people. They do not want to take note and report the extortion which they experience as part of corrupt practices happening in their neighborhood or work place. The main reason is that they are afraid to fight against corrupters who possess power, arms and money to do almost anything they want, and believe that law enforcers are not to be trusted.

These ideas came into our minds when we set up the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) in June 1998. ICW was established to be the catalyst for initiating corruption cases, and to protect the wellbeing of the whistleblower or eyewitness. ICW was set up to persuade society to brave collective action in order not to tolerate corrupt practices that happen in their environment no matter how small. In this case, ICW positions itself as a shield to the eyewitness or whistleblower, who wishes that his identity be unknown and refuses to take the risk of becoming the victim of extortion from the corrupters he had reported.

At the beginning, the program was very difficult to run. The whistleblower often lacked complete data, probably because they were not sure that their reports will be forwarded to the proper institution, and whether these will even be processed. They also had some doubts about ICW's sincerity in helping them out. It is no secret that information against someone bad can be used for extortion.

Our strategy is to try to obtain the necessary information from society, apart from ensuring that any report with complete data will be processed as should be, then forward the case to the government officer concerned and the law enforcer. At the same time, we developed a network with various groups especially trade unions, the banking sector and state-owned enterprises. Some of the innocent and honest people in the bureaucracy and law enforcement institutions have given ICW contributions in revealing some of our corruption cases.

All our cases and all the data we gather pass through several legal consultations. The cases are open for the public's scrutiny. All are presented to society through the media as part of our transparency and accountability policy. This is very important in managing our reports and cases in order to develop society's trust. Leads on a corruption case are usually sent to the media and to journalists and they become news material. The trust of the people becomes the most important element for ICW to obtain more detailed corruption data from the people themselves, aside from the ability and technique of our investigation staff.

Advantages and disadvantages

Exposing corruption cases through the public media has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that every report gets widespread news and all the public attention. It then becomes very effective in pushing for social sanctions against corrupters as a substitute for law enforcement which is ineffective. When media gained its freedom during the liberation of the press, there were so many new media houses established. Through media it has become easier for us to facilitate and gain public support.

There are also some disadvantages. In the middle of 'backhand' or dubious culture among some journalists, we experienced some major constraints. So we had to develop close relationships with the idealistic journalists. This is because the other party-the corrupters-also tried to develop good relations with the media. Although they were not able to do this with all media, particularly those who are very influential or owners of major magazines or newspapers, some have agreed with the idea of giving of social sanction to corrupters.

The media was also not really interested to report corruption cases which directly affect the quality of basic human services, such as in health services, education and the like. Media at some point were not interested to educate society for a better understanding of the nature, influence and causes of corruption; these are very important to know how corruption can be eliminated.

Exposure of corruption is also not always beneficial. Some people have their own motives for exposing corruption cases. It becomes even more dangerous when the "watchdog" later on turn out not to be an independent institution. It is important that any social movement, especially anticorruption movements, must be independent and keep a distance from political and business interests, and the authority, whether it be a person, institution or the source of their funding.

Our movement has experienced many struggles in the work of exposing corruption cases, many of them remain relatively unknown to the public. Two things that usually happen are intimidation and threats of physical harm. And because there is the lack of laws to protect witnesses, such as a witness protection law, the accused corrupter is able to use the law in his own defense. This presents a real danger and threat to our movement.

We are happy to note, however-and it is still beyond our belief-that our method of exposing corruption cases, which is very simple, has become a model applied everywhere by various other institutions. With all the variations made on the method, it has in turn created more "watchdog" institutions all over Indonesia.

But I would like to think that we do not simply report investigations, but that there is a more strategic effort for an effective campaign. The purpose is to develop public opinion, increase public pressure and eventually lead to a petition against a corrupt government officer or law enforcer, member of the house of representatives, and even, if need be, a corrupt President. Almost all big corruption cases handled by the police or the attorney-general, though most of these cases did not reach the court, came about from a public statement and through public pressure.

Reinforcement of Society

Reinforcing or strengthening society to check government's effectiveness is our priority mission. For each activity we use a different approach. For example, in the 2004 General Elections, we took the initiative in conducting the "Movement Not to Vote Rotten Politicians". Also, we monitored money politics and the financial transactions of the presidential candidates.

That is part of our political education program: giving information on the bad records of candidates in the legislative and presidential posts to the public and turn "irrational voters " to become "rational voters", for people to think and be judicious in their choice of candidates. In a short time, this movement expanded. What made it possible was the enthusiastic response and support from the people, who made a decision not to allow dirty politicians to hold public office. Although some rotten politicians were still able to land seats in the House of Representatives due to our flawed electoral system, there were only two such members out of 500 selected by direct voting.

Direct people participation in controlling public service performance is very important for further development. The Report Card System, which was applied on a trial basis in the education sector in Jakarta, obviously has altered a passive society. The public has become active in pushing for better government performance. This method is now being developed for the health sector.

The only constraint in this approach is the need to organize society. To fight against rotten politicians needs an alliance of the big voters. To press for quality service delivery in the education sector you need to have the support of independent teachers' organizations; in the social welfare sector, you need to mobilize independent associations of the elderly for instance, as well as the other sectors. The problem is, when the New Order was in command, many social institutions have been destroyed and the general public was unorganized.

The fight against corruption needs strong political will. This is in order to have a strong and effective social movement. To this end, we are still coping with how to influence various parties to make anticorruption become everyone's agenda. Corruption agenda should be a program of religious institutions, the business sector, labor unions, teachers, farmers, fishermen, consumers, and all sectors of society.

Corruption takes place not because of the fundamental weaknesses of the state, but corruption stems from the imbalance in the relationship between society, the government and business. Anticorruption movement has to become part of the democratization movement to develop the equilibrium.