Friday, July 3, 2009

Disrupting Corruption

Posted by John
North Sumatra’s Medan Airport provides the perfect view of the consequences of corruption among Indonesia’s political elite. Jockeying for position among hundreds of passengers around two antiquated baggage claim carousels, you’re left with the impression that Indonesia’s third-largest city of 2 million people deserves better.

For the past 10 years, North Sumatran political leaders have promised better. Money is budgeted for a new airport, but construction has stalled. Each year, local politicians dip into the funds in order to cover other costs, such as financing their own increasingly expensive campaigns. Meanwhile, over at the airport, cranes idle and planes squeeze into crowded terminals.

The story of Medan’s airport — false starts, good intentions and incomplete implementation — is repeated in other public works projects across the country. Part of the explanation lies in Indonesia’s public finances. Almost all Indonesians work in the informal economy and make very little money, which means they don’t pay taxes. Not paying taxes may sound appealing to Americans who grumble about the IRS each year as April 15 approaches, but it also severs citizens from their government.

With little understanding or stake in how the government funds its programs, most Indonesians have low expectations for what their government should provide. The government manages to meet those low expectations, especially since there is genuine ambiguity about who is responsible for basic services — schools, roads and trash pick-up — that Americans take for granted.

Meanwhile, businesses and wealthier citizens tapped to fund the Indonesian government’s coffers move their money offshore whenever they can. It’s often a matter of finding the right government official and meeting his price. Corruption has been a consistent feature of Indonesian politics in the country’s 64-year postcolonial history. Transparency International, an agency that tracks political corruption, placed Indonesia 126th in its 2008 Corruption Perception Index of 180 countries. That’s slightly behind Honduras and just ahead of Libya.

Two new features of Indonesian politics promise meaningful change, however. First, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (“SBY”) has had a far less accommodating attitude toward political corruption during his five years in office. The government’s anticorruption commission even prosecuted a member of SBY’s extended family accused of wrongdoing. Here in Medan, both the mayor and vice-mayor recently landed in jail for embezzlement.

SBY’s anticorruption consistently comes up in Danielle’s interviews with Indonesians and accounts for much of the president’s popularity. If he wins next week’s presidential election by as large a margin as projected, his meaningful accomplishments in anticorruption will be a major reason why. For some sense of the change that has occurred in the SBY era, Transparency International’s Corruption Index as recently as 2001 placed Indonesia ahead only of Nigeria, Uganda and Bangladesh.

The second change on corruption comes from the Islamic-inspired Justice and Welfare Party (PKS), which has served as a gadfly on this issue during the last decade. While I bemoaned the political confusion that has emerged with the proliferation of political parties in Indonesia, one real advantage has been that success by new parties like PKS shows that people are willing to listen to parties that take corruption seriously.

PKS has garnered Western press attention because of its links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its professed intention to implement sharia (Islamic law) in Indonesia. Less noticed, however, has been PKS’ fight against corruption, which accounts for much of its popularity. The party has become so successful at making corruption its signature issue that one sex worker Danielle interviewed as part of her research said she would vote for PKS — even though the party’s insistence on sharia means it would hardly look kindly on this woman’s profession.

In most Indonesian towns and villages, political parties still offer money, rice or other goods on the eve of an election in exchange for votes. Rather than receiving sustained public services from the government over time, this one-time bribe from political parties is often the extent of constituents’ interaction with the political system.

PKS’ influence is challenging this arrangement, however. During the April parliamentary election in Medan, several mosques gathered up religious clothes and prayer rugs that political parties had donated. They told parties to come retrieve these items — no one would be allowed to bribe their way into office using the mosques. Partly because of the attention PKS has brought to corruption, religious figures are unwilling to passively accept it.

PKS earned 7 percent of the vote in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections in April — not enough to allow them to run a presidential candidate, but enough to make them a potential kingmaker in Indonesia’s coalition politics. For this election, they’ve cast their lot with SBY’s Democratic Party. While the parties disagree about social issues and the role of Islam in Indonesian politics, they can find common ground on anti-corruption initiatives. SBY will probably have to find important places for PKS leaders in a second-term presidential cabinet.

It remains to be seen whether SBY’s Democratic Party and PKS — both relatively new creations — will have staying power in the Indonesian political landscape. PKS’ successes in fighting corruption mean they will remain relevant, if not a major party. And if the president’s party consolidates its legacy of anti-corruption, it will go a long way in helping it establish institutional permanence after SBY.

For all these successes in challenging the culture of corruption in Indonesia, however, nostalgia persists for Suharto, the president who set up one of the world’s most corrupt governments during his 33 years of rule. Suharto’s crony kingdom began to unravel when disgust with members of Suharto’s family and inner circle lining their pockets reached a breaking point during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1998.

Still, historical memory has been kind to Suharto. The poorest Indonesians have not all seen consistent gains during the SBY era. Several SBY supporters told Danielle in interviews that while they are happy with the current president, particularly his anti-corruption efforts, they would definitely vote for Suharto if the former president were on the ballot.

“Suharto may have been corrupt, but he left something for the rakyat kecil (little people),” one said.

Those “little people” still vote in large numbers in Indonesia. Absent meaningful changes in Indonesians’ economic circumstances, a populist who can convincingly pose as the people’s champion — regardless of his or her political platform — may galvanize a new political movement in the post-SBY era.

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