KPK Selection Process: When a Serial Killer Chose His Own Team of Detectives

OVERLOOKED. Yunus Husein, the former chief of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) was not chosen by lawmakers to lead Indonesia's top anticorruption body allegedly due to his fearsome reputation as "the man who knew the balance of your bank account".  

(photo by Arief Manurung)

The House of Representatives complex at Senayan, Jakarta became a stage of another failure of democracy after House lawmakers from Commission III overseeing legal affairs named its four new leaders for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

When I attended the voting process on Friday last week, it was a strange view that there were few –or if even any– journalists, NGO representatives, commission’s staffs, and even security guards who were seen clapping in the midst of noisy applause and loud celebration among the lawmakers after the Commission’s chairman read aloud the result.

The disappointment of the neutrals who witnessed the voting process and follow the issue thoroughly was clear: the current KPK composition is a massive letdown, and the lawmakers’ decision did not represent them and their fellow Indonesian people.

The appointee of lawyer Abraham Samad, National Police Commission member Adnan Pandupraja, and senior prosecutor Zulkarnaen to fill the KPK top posts had raised eyebrows on whether the House lawmakers have already done their main task of representing the public properly.

The government selection committee tasked to assess the eight candidates merely placed Abraham, Zulkarnaen, and Pandu as underdogs in the race, placing the three of them as the fifth-, sixth, and seventh-best candidate in its ranking, respectively.

There is no doubt that the naming of lawyer and antigraft activist Bambang Widjojanto was no more than "sweetener" to play down public controversy in the issue. In rational way of thinking, there is no explainable reason for the lawmakers to eliminate the flawless Bambang, who the selection committee assessed as its best candidate and thus was viewed as the heavy favorite in the race among the public.

Although it could hardly be described as the worst composition for KPK, the current one is without doubt would be a setback for the country's top anticorruption commission.

Among the five new executives of KPK (the four new executives plus the incumbent Busyro Muqoddas), the absence of a financial and auditing expert is hardly understandable.

In many occasions, lawmakers repeatedly uttered about the importance for KPK to focus not only on prosecuting corruptors but also on preventing corruption practices to occur. While prosecuting would punish corruptors and instigate fears among the people, preventive measures, the lawmakers argued, would make people who want to commit corruption were “unable” to do such practices and reduce corruption tally in the long run.

But why does the KPK’s new five executives comprise one prosecutor (Zulkarnaen) and four lawyers (Abraham, Bambang Busyro, Pandupraja), yet there was not any expert who has background in financial and auditing investigation?

Among the eight names proposed by the government selection panel to the House, there were two candidates who met the criterion: Yunus Husein, the former chief of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK); and Handoyo Sudrajat, the KPK internal affairs director. The two were rated highly and deemed as frontrunners, too, as Yunus and Handoyo was ranked by the selection panel as the second- and fourth-best candidates in its ranking, respectively.

If lawmakers were talking about preventive measures, then they should definitely choose person with expertise in auditing and financial investigations. They could, without doubt, strengthen the KPK’s supervision system or even established a new scheme that could limit the corruptors’ assets-movement –and surely potential corruptors would have to think twice to commit fraudulent practices as they had their bank accounts watched closely.

While lawmakers argued that the rejection of Yunus was related to his close ties with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the ruling Democratic Party; but this argument is certainly baseless. In this leaked document of the candidates’ review, the selection panel rated Yunus as the third-highest candidate in the attribute of “independency” after Bambang and Abdullah.

How could Yunus –who garnered 105 compared to the newly elected KPK chief Abraham who earned 94 in “independency”– was rated highly in that criterion if he leaned to certain political figure and thus was not independent?   

In addition to the inexplicable omission of both Yunus and Handoyo, the exclusion of a bold figure such as Abdullah Hehamahua was also a loss in immeasurable extent. He was valiant, independent, and –as an officer at the KPK– knew exactly the inside problems of the KPK and how to fix them.

The only ones who dislike a great anticorruption fighter like Abdullah perhaps would be the corruptors themselves. Portraying Abdullah as a fearless figure would be an understatement. He was described at his best with his own words, which he uttered during his fit-and-proper test with the lawmakers: "I want to be murdered by corruptors."

From the politics-ridden selection process for the new KPK leaders, we could see the major flaw of our widely applauded democracy. That is, when the personal interests of our directly elected politicians set aside the country’s anticorruption agenda, which in fact should become the main priority.

In Indonesia, it was hilarious to know that the corruptors themselves were given the mandate to choose the leaders for the country’s anticorruption body. It is very much the same with a serial killer who has the authority to choose the team of detectives that would investigate his case –surely, it would be rational choice for him to pick the less-skilled detectives to avoid getting caught. 

Food Crisis: Hungry Citizens are Overthrowing Governments

BREAD TALK. The surge in foods and basic commodities price has sparked public unrests in many parts of the world especially in Mideast countries like Jordan, where a citizen here is seen using a baguette bread to vent his anger to Jordanian government during a street protest.

(photo by Kahlil Marzaawi)

On how to deal with middle and working class people, here’s one good advice that all world leaders (or dictators), could listen: Give them sufficient food and they would give less trouble for you –because food, after all, is the most important necessity that they need.

It was in the year of 1998 when working and middle class Indonesians conquered the streets to end the 32-year autocratic reign of Soeharto, but before those people were longing for the taste of democracy and liberty, it was actually their hungry stomach and bitter economic condition that provoked the transition in the first place.

Following the monetary crisis in 1997, the Indonesian economy was in its nadir and the ASEAN region was infected with currency crisis that was originated in Thailand; which eventually led to massive-scale currency depreciation in neighborhood countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines.

In Indonesia, the crisis caused the price of basic commodities to rise beyond the reach of common people, and eventually increased the number of Indonesians who lived below poverty line. As people were pointless at that time and had no one to blame for their suffering, they challenged the autocracy and look for democracy as the solution.

Would Soeharto lose his power if the 1997 economic crisis did not occur? Of course, there were several other factors that contributed to his downfall. But if working-class mothers were not struggling to buy rice and basic necessities at that time, surely their husbands would not have the motive to illegally loot shopping stores and their children would not be so interested to join the street protests.

In November last year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published Food Outlook report and warned against the rising price of basic commodities and the looming food crisis as bleak outlook in 2011.

Less than four months after the ‘prophecy’ was published, it has had its tolls already, as surging global price of foods and basic commodities triggered public uproars which were responsible for the ousting of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and put other governments in balance.

Widespread corruption, unjust elections, and undemocratic government have long become concern for citizens in Mideast; but it was not until the symptoms of food crisis 2011 materialized that both Tunisian and Egyptian people truly fed up with their governments and decided to take the matter with their own hands.

In Tunisia, inflated food price and bloated unemployment rate were actually the initial motives behind the public unrest that led to the resignation of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The domino effect then went to Egypt, where people there ultimately realize that they are also experiencing the same problem as their neighbor in the west.

Egypt is the world’s largest importer on wheat; a commodity which has seen its price soaring for more than 50% since last year. In the country, food security has always become a major issue as Egyptians spend about 40% of their monthly income on food; compared to 28% for the Chinese or 6.1% for the Americans in estimations made by the US Department of Agriculture.

When the largest fraction of your income is spent on food, surely you will be the party that suffers the most if there is a hike in food price. Hence, makes no wonder if the Egyptians were among the firsts to take the bull by the horns:

“Hey life is getting harder these days, so why don’t we try the same thing with Husni Mubarak, just like the Tunisians did with their president?”

True, other causes also contribute to this 2011 Mideast revolution; such as greedy tyrants who had been clinging in their offices for too long, or ingrained corruption culture within the government that those tyrants have nurtured.

Or perhaps the influence of social media, which also deserves recognition as seemingly regimes in China, Iran, and North Korea so far have been able to evade the public uproar because their leaders have been notorious for isolating their own people from the internet.

But food crisis irrefutably played a part on the uprisings that lead to the 2011 Mideast revolution. Just recently, Rabah Arezki from the IMF and Markus Brückner from the University of Adelaide publish a research paper that confirms the relationship between international food prices and government stability. Interestingly, their research concludes that there is a positive correlation between food price increase in low-income countries and the likelihood of civil conflict and anti-government demonstrations.

The research is proven true and commonsensical in many ways. For instance, if you were about to join an anti-government demonstration, which issue that you are more likely to join: corruption or rising food prices?

For some people the answer may differ, but if surging price of basic commodities start to affect your earnings and your family, you will have a tendency to choose the latter than the former. Without doubt, people are more likely to go berserk on matters that directly affect them, such as rising food prices, compared to matters like corruption or others.

FAO recently reported that food price had reached a new record high in February; and the world is seemingly welcoming a resurgence of food crisis in 2011. The case of overthrown governments in Egypt and Tunisia is tangible proof that governments have indeed become more susceptible during these times.

This is a serious warning for all immortal-looking dictators from North Korea to Myanmar whose hungry citizens are perhaps next in line to demand revolutions.

This article was published in The Jakarta Post on Monday, March 21 2011

Why Sri Mulyani Could be the Next President

VOTE FOR VENDETTA. 2014 is payback time, during which this Iron Woman will set to bring Indonesia's bureaucratic reform to the next level and take her vengeance to those corrupt lawmakers and politicians.

Six years ago, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono certainly could remember what it felt like being treated unfairly by his supervisor when he, apart from his position as Coordinating Minister of Political and Security Affairs under Megawati Soekarnoputri, was actually neither invited nor involved by her in several cabinet meetings concerning various political and security matters.

But for Yudhoyono, it seems that every cloud has its own silver lining –so does Megawati’s harsh treatment to him which eventually led to his resignation from his ministerial post on March 11 2004.

This is because in the end, it’s Yudhoyono who had the last laugh. Megawati’s decision to expel Yudhoyono from the other cabinet members –as well as the cruel words from Taufik Kiemas (Megawati’s husband), who added fuel to a fire and accused Yudhoyono of exaggerating things and being ‘too childish’– backfired and contributed to her loss in the presidential election to Yudhoyono at the same year.

In fact, Megawati’s story of how a president made the most of her authority to bully her own subordinate had without doubt helped Yudhoyono to win sympathy from many Indonesians; eventually leading him to win the presidential election and trounce Megawati by a wide margin.

What Indonesia had in the past is somewhat identical to the situation at present, where now finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati suddenly turns out to be a media-darling figure and draws sympathies from many Indonesians following her heroic role as the sacrificed bishop to save her king from his inconvenient position in the political chessboard.

For Sri Mulyani, it is worth noting that there were several cases besides Yudhoyono’s story above, particularly women, when someone rose to prominence and eventually ended up on top level in politics because she was able to gain sympathy of the people.

In Pakistan, the father of the legendary Benazir Bhutto was unjustly ousted from power by his political foe through a military coup and was sentenced to death. This later sparked a deep-rooted indignation among the Pakistanis which helped the Pakistan People Party, of which Benazir Bhutto was the chairperson, to gain massive support from the people.

Benazir Bhutto, who once headed finance ministry like Sri Mulyani, finally reached the pinnacle of her politics career when she took oath as the first and the only woman ever to become a prime minister in Pakistan.

The preceding tale was also similar to Megawati Soekarnoputri whose tear-jerking past helped her a lot to be recognized in Indonesia politics and won the sympathy of the people. Her father Soekarno, a national hero who proclaimed Indonesia’s independence, was exiled and sullied when Soeharto took over and Soekarno’s descendents, including Megawati, had to endure 32 years of oppression and tribulation from Soeharto and his cronies.

Prior to her seemingly reluctant move to World Bank, actually Sri Mulyani has drawn many sympathies already for her role of being the shield to the president himself during the fallout of Bank Century bailout, protecting Yudhoyono from the scorching political bullets while at the same time her own boss apparently was more interested in washing his hands clean on the subject.

Besides, Sri Mulyani was, without doubt, the person who deserves the largest share of the credit for Indonesia’s striking economic performance during the last financial crisis which, ironically, was the backbone of Yudhoyono’s victory in the last presidential election.

And now instead of protecting Sri Mulyani from the business and political rascals who have been unsettled by the bureaucratic reform which she initiated, Yudhoyono decided to forgo her and bow to the given pressure.

Fortunately, those cruel treatments of Yudhoyono’s to his meritorious finance minister may be a blessing in disguise for Sri Mulyani herself as well as many Indonesians who have been longing for a fearless, intellectual figure who has the capability and guts to become a president and reform Indonesia from the very top of the bureaucracy itself.

Thanks to the enormous exposure from the press –as well as numerous analysis and insights from high-profile intellectuals in various media–, in addition to the growing sympathies to Sri Mulyani her departure has also opened the eyes of many Indonesians about how brilliant this person actually was and how much she has done to Indonesia’s economy during her tenure as finance minister.

As an old saying goes, you never know what you get until it’s gone. It’s like when Michael Jackson passed away and, because of massive coverage from various types of information media all over the world, all of a sudden all music fans worldwide realized the fact that his contribution to the music industry had actually been so immense.

The difference is that Sri Mulyani is still alive and when she finishes her four-year term as World Bank’s managing director in 2014 and comes back to Indonesia as she has promised, she could be one of Indonesia’s highest profiles for our election during that year.

For Sri Mulyani, the moment could not be better. She is only 47 at present, and if she really wants to bid for presidential post in 2014, she will be 51.

If one still considers her to be too green to be a president, she still has a lot of time behind her back. If Sri Mulyani only runs as a vice-president candidate in 2014 then runs again for president five years later, then she is still 56 at 2019. And bidding at the age of 56 will put her still even younger than Prabowo Subianto, who ran at the age of 57 during the last presidential election and in fact was still the youngest among his counterparts.

One problem that emerges is Sri Mulyani is a well-known technocrat, and it is still questionable whether she possesses such political motivation to be a president –or even as a vice-president.

But Sri Mulyani should reflect to Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first woman president, who was said to be initially hesitant to run for presidential post because she actually never possessed such ambition. In the end, due to the unprecedented surge on her popularity and pressure from her own supporters, she ultimately changed her mind and the rest that happened in Chile afterwards was history.

There is no doubt that Sri Mulyani’s recent popularity among Indonesians will definitely make political parties slaughtering each other to get her signature four years from now. And if at that time she is equipped with a decent political wheel, the spines of Indonesia’s corrupt businessmen and politicians will surely shiver like they never before.

The bureaucratic reform which Sri Mulyani spearheaded may suffer a temporary setback following her exodus to United States. But when she comes back here to run for a more strategic role to bring a broader scale of bureaucratic reform, she has more than enough ammunition already to get her revenge towards those corrupted evils who have colluded to kick her out from the country that she loves the most.

This article was published in Asia News Network on Tuesday, June 2 2010

Building Integrity of Indonesia's Future Generations

When my father was defiant to throw me to study at Kanisius Senior High School, at first I just could not comprehend his seemingly confounding decision. Despite realizing the fact that I will study in a Catholic school while actually he had struggled so hard to build an obedient Muslim environment in my family, or knowing that both he and my mother must take turns to wake up very early in the morning to drive me to school (it was located about 20 kilometers from my house); he stood firm on his decision. “The school will shape your mindset,” he argued.

During my three-year high school times there, in fact it did not take as long as three years for his argument to be proved dead right. Inside I discovered that the school was very strict in various matters, particularly in terms of its commitment to produce Indonesia’s younger generations with honest character, which can be considered somewhat hard to find these days.

And it was somewhat surprising how the school takes this simple matter very seriously. I was astounded the moment I found out that the all-boys school has one major rule for its students: that every student who is caught up in the act of cheating, beyond any reasonable doubt, will be shown the door out from the school.

The rule was not mere words. It was three weeks before the national exam, and the school was not so lenient when two of my friends –who both were third-year students at that time–, were caught red-handed when cheating during the class. As the consequence, they had to undergo the agony of dropping out from school as because of their wrongdoing.

After I graduated from high school and enter a whole new environment in university, I realized that unfortunately not everyone in Indonesia is on the same frame of mind. When I was still in my early sophomore year in the university, one of my peers was very surprised on how I could score so high on the national exam without cheating.

“I wonder how you guys achieved an almost-perfect score on national exam like that without bocoran soal (test’s answers). I simply wouldn’t even have passed the national exam if I were you,” he said.

“Back then, I and most of my friends in my high school chip in together to pay millions to insider in the education ministry, thus we can get the bocoran soal and very much relied on that to pass the national exam.”

That’s not the only one. While many were surprised by plagiarism cases that have been dominating newspapers’ headlines in recent weeks, yet for me the news was far from shocking. In actual fact, even here in one of the best universities in Indonesia, students who just do a copy-paste job from the internet for their tasks and conduct such act of plagiarism can still be found.

We can see that dishonesty practices, as they have always been, can be considered custom entrenched in Indonesia. Eventually as more and more people get accustomed to it, such ignominy turns out to be something rational thing to do: since everyone does thing the same way, it’s the people who don’t do it who will be considered wrong among their society.

As I grow up and can see Indonesia in a bigger picture, only now I can understand why my high school decided to pay intense attention to the word of “honesty” on its foundation of learning. For too long various dishonesty conducts, such as corruption, have been the root of evil that hampers Indonesia from reaching its full potential. While Indonesia inherits the land of rich natural resources which makes foreigners to see us with full envy, very frequent many of the resources are utilized to fulfill someone’s greed rather than the interest of this nation as a whole. Corruption practice like that, unfortunately, flourishes very well here in Indonesia.

Every student must be taught that deceitful things like cheating and plagiarism are the most disgraceful thing to be put into practice as it can become the origin of future corruption acts. Such mentality, therefore, should be planted in the mind of all Indonesia’s younger generations from the very beginning of their development.

The future of one nation lies in the hands of its younger generations, and we ought to invest in our younger generations if we want to fulfill our dream of seeing this nation to stride forward. Without doubt, in the future Indonesia needs leaders and government officials who are equipped by not only intellectual aptitude, but also integrity. And yes we really need to start thinking about implementing strict policies when it comes to the subject of reforming the mindset and mentality of our younger generations.

The tangible solution is clear: someone needs to do something to fix Indonesia deep from the root of the problem itself. Perhaps that was the thing which crossed into the mind of my high school’s executives when they established such stern rule; or what exactly my father thought by the time he insisted on putting me to study there.

This article was published in The Jakarta Post on Saturday, March 6 2010

Time for the Young to Take Over

THE YEAR OF THE PRODIGY. Last year of 2009 saw prolific young men rising to the next level and taking over the lead from the older generations. (From top left, clockwise) Anies Baswedan, Gumilar Somantri, Firmanzah, Barack Obama, Jonathan Favreau, and Josep Guardiola.

Persons who are in charge of top-level management positions are usually on the age of 50s or 60s. But few months ago my university friends and I were covered in disbelief as we found out that our newly-elected dean, impressively, did not follow suit. Still at the age of only 33, Pak Firmanzah rose against the seemingly impossible odds to beat other more experienced candidates to become the youngest-ever dean in the history of University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Economics (FEUI).

Because of his young age, at first many consider him as green and lacking on experience to lead the faculty –but so far he has proven the critics wrong. It has only been eight months since Pak Fiz –that’s how we usually call him– took charge as our new dean, but his hard-working attitude and attentive leadership style have made him a popular figure among us FEUI students.

My respected dean is not alone in this case. Recently such occurrence can no longer be considered as unlikely; up to this day we have seen a significant increase in number of younger people who have been given huge responsibility to hold an important role in high level –and so far they have proven to us that they can perform the given task as well as the older and more experienced generation does.

Before Firmanzah, In Indonesia the predecessor includes the person to whom he has to report now, Gumilar Rusliwa Soemantri, who became University of Indonesia’s rector at the age of only 44. UI sees a significant increase of its THES QS universities rank from 287^th to 201^st this year among 4000 universities which were evaluated, thanks to various internal reforms in UI that were encouraged by Gumilar himself.

Even more impressive is the achievement of Anies Baswedan, the rector of Paramadina University whose intellect earned him a place as one of the members of the so-called “Team 8”. Anies Baswedan was merely 38 years old when he was appointed as the head of the University and despite his relatively young age today he is highly regarded as one of the brightest political analysts in Indonesia.

Young people are rising and we can see that this phenomenon does happen in almost every sector in the world. In sports, this year many football pundits heaped praises on Josep Guardiola’s managerial ability as he rose to become the youngest UEFA Champions League winning manager ever. Only in his first season at the club, Guardiola, the former Spanish international who just turned 38 this year, successfully lead his star-studded FC Barcelona team to win the competition, having beaten the veteran 67-year old Sir Alex Ferguson and his Manchester United team in the final.

In world politics, perhaps this year will be best remembered because of the historic victory of Barack Obama, who, despite the robust challenge by far older and more experienced persons like John McCain and Hillary Clinton during the election, has been able to win the US presidential election and become the fifth-youngest man in the US history to occupy the oval office.

Barack Obama seems to read the wind as he also trusted several of his key posts to be given to the younger colleague of his. More experienced economist like the 66-year-old Joseph Stiglitz was left out in the cold and Obama decided to choose younger faces like 48-year-old Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary or 40-year-old Peter Orzag as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget instead. Obama also appointed a young writing-prodigy named Jonathan Favreau, 28, as his Director of Speechwriting –and a brilliant speech deliverer and best-seller book author like Barack Obama definitely doesn’t trust ordinary man in doing that task, which allows the person to have a massive authority in controlling his words.

But unfortunately we did not have much choice during the last presidential election. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono certainly represented the older generation when he took oath as our president in the age of 60, and the same can also be said to his vice-president Boediono who was 67. Other candidates are very much the same and the youngest among them all is vice-president candidate Prabowo Subianto who, despite all of his youthful spirit and stirring speeches which he brought to us, was actually 57 and surely he will be a bit long in the tooth if he is to represent younger generation in the 2014 election.

Indonesia is lagging behind on the regeneration and this becomes a millstone around our neck today; you can just look to the last presidential election’s candidates or SBY’s ministerial cabinet formation and you will realize that both are still dominated by stale and old-timer politicians. We may have just finished our presidential election this year, but as we usher to the year of 2010 and are gearing up to the next 2014 election we might well start considering about rejuvenation.

Yes, the bitter fact is that Indonesia still highly depends to the older generation up to present –public are fed up staring at the same old faces and are ravenous for having younger generations to replace them.

In this year of 2009, people like Firmanzah, Gumilar Rusliwa Soemantri, Anies Baswedan, Barack Obama, and Josep Guardiola have proven to us that young people are up against the challenge. In the next year of 2010, will there be more number of young people who emerge at various top levels just like last year? Or will this be the year of revelation for someone waiting in the wings to bring about the rejuvenation in Indonesia’s 2014 election?

This article was part of the limited edition copy of The Jakarta Post special report; Review 2009 and Outlook 2010