The Time for Talk Is Over, SBY Says on Anti-Graft Day

Jakarta Globe, Hangga Brata & Ezra Sihite | December 10, 2011

Related articles

• Anticorruption Efforts Start in the Classroom
• Editorial: Stop Corruption Before It Starts
• SBY Urges Religious Tolerance, Scolds Intimidators in Speech at Batak Church
• Edhie-Aliya Union is 'Love' Not 'Coalition': SBY
• Wedding ofPresidential Proportions, But SBY Will Not Take Any Days Off

In his International Anti-Corruption Day  speech on Friday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the government would engage more with antigraft activists to plot the best way to rid the country of corruption.

“I will not give any more speeches. What I said at the Anti-Corruption Day celebration was enough,” Yudhoyono said at a ceremony in Semarang, which was attended by top antigraft activists. “Now, I want input from all of you so that efforts to prevent and eradicate corruption become more successful.”

Among those at the ceremony were Indonesia Corruption Watch chairman Danang Widoyoko, Transparency International Indonesia secretary general Teten Masduki and Alexander Lay of the Indonesian Legal Roundtable.

Yudhoyono said the government was also pushing for more bilateral agreements to allow the country to extradite corruption suspects and reclaim stolen assets stashed overseas.

“Indonesia does not want countries to become safe havens for corrupt Indonesians,” he said.

Justice Minister Amir Syamsuddin said that after the 2004 presidential instruction on the acceleration of corruption eradication was issued, Indonesia had enjoyed steady success in ridding the country of graft.

Since 2005, he said, the National Police have handled 1,961 corruption cases, saving more than Rp 679 billion ($75.4 million) in state losses.

The minister also applauded the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for successfully prosecuting 196 cases since its establishment in 2003.

More than Rp 800 billion in compensation and fines was gained from cases prosecuted by the KPK, as well as another Rp 151 trillion from the organization’s graft prevention efforts, according to Amir.

Not everything, however, was so rosy. Amir said more than 1,000 corruption cases had been dropped by the Attorney General’s Office in the past seven years. Since 2004, he said, the AGO has handled 8,394 cases, but only 6,831 have made it to prosecution.

Although the AGO managed to save more than Rp 13 trillion in stolen state assets since 2004, he said, that figure would have been higher if it took more cases to court and won.

Yudhoyono said Indonesia’s anticorruption efforts had helped lift the country’s economy, which has grown from Rp 500 trillion in 2004 to Rp 1,200 trillion in 2011.

While the all the figures offered by Amir and Yudhoyono make it sound like the country is making real headway in fighting corruption, not all of the numbers could be immediately verified.

Yudhoyono’s speech came after Transparency International Indonesia on Thursday criticized the government for failing to fight corruption.

In the group’s latest Corruption Perception Index, Indonesia improved slightly from 2.8 to 3.0, with 10 being the least corrupt. TI

Indonesia’s president, Natalia Soebagjo, dismissed the improvement as “insignificant.”

Indonesia aims to get at least a 5.0 in the 2014 Transparency survey, but Indonesian Institute of Sciences researcher Syamsuddin Haris said it should lower its goal.

Syamsuddin said the House of Representatives’ decision to select a relatively unknown lawyer, Abraham Samad, to chair the KPK was a political one.

“[Samad’s appointment] is a product of political compromise,” he said. “I suspect he was chosen because he is easier to tame than the other candidates.”

ICW deputy chairman Adnan Topan Husodo also criticized Abraham’s pledge to settle within a year cases left unfinished by the previous KPK leadership.

“This is too big of a promise,” he said. “Cases like Century and Nazaruddin will not be resolved in one year. The House is naive if it believes this because the KPK leadership is collective, so he has to deal with other KPK commissioners in setting KPK policy.”

In Malang, East Java, hundreds of students from Brawijaya University were collecting coins for Abraham, who promised to quit the KPK if he failed to keep his promise to resolve the cases.

“These coins will be his pocket money …  if in one year he is not able to live up to his promise,” said the university’s student body president, Arief Budi Laksono.

Additional reporting by

Rizky Amelia, Rangga Prakoso, Rahmat & Antara

Demonstrators protesting against the tax mafia during a protest to mark 

Anti-Corruption Day in from of the Corruption Eradication Commission in Jakarta

on Friday. (AFP Photo)