'Don't push me'

By Terry Lacey

(November 22, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono finds himself uncomfortably between the devil and the deep blue sea. His anti-graft campaign is stalled and the anti-graft lobby seems to be accusing him of stalling it, while he says don’t push me to do silly things, and that he will do what he must in due course and later deal with those attacking his own reputation and that of his family. (The Jakarta Post 19.11.09).

This political storm rises as the chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) faces a bizarre murder charge, while two KPK deputy chairmen, denounced by its detained chairman, face charges for abuse of power and bribery. The investigative team appointed by the President to investigate says the latter charges may be fabricated and to drop them, but the state judicial and police machinery rolls on with charges and trials. (The Jakarta Post 18.11.09).

The President is right that precipitate political interference from on high in judicial processes will not solve this. If judicial process is flawed, then judicial process must resolve this, and the political process must reform the judiciary, not subvert it. But he also has the power, at the right time, to reform the leadership of the police.

The President has to rise above the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to lead Indonesia out of the corner into which some of the political elite seek to push him and the nation.

And those who want reform must not allow themselves to be manipulated by those who seek perhaps to avoid that the Sword of Damocles might fall on them next.

For this wave of anti-corruption campaigns, investigations and trials and tribulations on the road to justice has had such public support that the KPK had become like Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, pitched in battle in Chicago against Al Calpone and the Mafia.

Corruption is a system of relationships and values which hold things together in a certain way and cannot be dismantled without substitutes and broader strategy, nor tackled mechanistically and out of social and political context, for fear of creating endless cycles of destabilizing conflict.

Corruption has grown with democracy and globalization and the increased international activities of governments, aid institutions and multinational companies.

This cannot be solved only by laying about the political, economic and social elite of Indonesia with the Sword of Damocles in isolation from wider social, cultural and international realities and actions. It takes two to tango and Indonesian corrupters have not been dancing on their own in some kind of South East Asian line dance. They have had partners.

When the British, just by way of an unrelated example, pushed for global progress on money laundering then some of the main culprits on the negative list they themselves compiled included British crown colonies with offshore banking industries in the Caribbean, whose governments were run from Whitehall in London. They who sought reform had first to reform themselves!

Alleged illegal commissions by British companies on arms deals in the Middle East became huge political scandals in the UK, attracting major attention from corruption watchers, including the OECD in Paris, and have never been fully resolved to the satisfaction of many observers. So if the West cannot end such a saga fast and neatly then how can the East ?

The financial crimes of Western bankers and the financial services sector were part of the root cause of the 2008 financial collapse. There but for a little discipline and the grace of God go sharia bankers and financiers as well! Beware and do not repeat these mistakes! Derivatives, high leverage instruments and the collapse of over-levered Islamic bonds could be your undoing !

So nobody´s perfect, and we should take Indonesian corruption in a wider context, albeit that the country has the doubtful honor of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

In the first five years of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government, reform of public administration, especially in the ministry of finance and tax collection, were implemented by small bands of loyal civil servants taking risks and dominating events and procedures where they could, backed by a minority of dedicated and able ministers and the President.

The KPK may have died. Long live the KPK! But something wider and stronger is needed. Or that a reformed KPK is based on the foundation of comprehensive public administration reform.

Rome was not built in a day. The wise man builds his house upon the rocks. The KPK became too isolated from and too much of a threat to the political mainstream. Reform out of step with reality becomes attempted (and failed) revolution or crumbles into dust. Indonesia needs time and a better sense of balance in a new and changing world.

The West is not right about everything and reform must not remove the backbone of what makes things strong and workable, especially a strong state and the networks that hold it together.

The famous advertisement for Heineken lager said that it could reach the parts that no other lager could reach.

President Yudhoyono launched the anti-corruption campaign for which he and the KPK are now being punished and between them they already reached parts that no-one else ever did. But even his reach will only go as far as the society will actively support, and the best outcome for the future will not be obtained if activists focus on his shortcomings instead of his achievements.

In whose interests is it that his overall political thrust and anti-corruption efforts should be blunted? And what better way to do it than to accuse him of not doing enough, or of complicity in corruption or injustice ?

So the reformers and Facebook fighters should get serious and help build and support the anti-corruption army that is needed and not seek to undermine the only man with the power to put a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy in place, the democratically elected President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, popularly elected to do just that.

( Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking. )

-Sri Lanka Guardian