Addressing discontent

Last Friday Indonesia’s Constitutional Court announced it had officially discharged its chief justice for corruption.

Reports from Jakarta said Akil Mochtar sobbed as he was led away following the sting operation in early October in his house where he allegedly received the equivalent of $261,000 in cash from a politician and two businessmen seeking a favorable ruling on an election dispute.

Formed in 2001, the Constitutional Court has the same legal standing as Indonesia’s Supreme Court, and handles cases involving election disputes and constitutional issues.

The cash was seized from Akil’s home by members of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK, for Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi), whose successful campaign since its creation in 2003 made it one of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay awardees.

Akil, who once suggested that corrupt officials should be stripped of all their assets and have their fingers cut off, resigned from the court shortly after his arrest. He is under investigation not only for corruption but also money laundering and possible drug abuse and tax evasion.

Reports said Indonesians were dismayed by the fall of Akil, who styled himself as an anti-corruption champion and was elected to the court position.

At the same time, however, Akil’s arrest was seen as another achievement for the KPK, which has indicted about 300 officials for corruption in the past 10 years and secured the conviction of about 60, including members of parliament, provincial governors, a city mayor and the minister of sports. In September, a police general was sentenced to 10 years for corruption and money laundering.

The Constitutional Court used to enjoy high public trust, and Akil’s fall has raised concern about the validity of rulings handed down by his court. The case has also highlighted the pervasiveness of corruption in the country.

That Akil was caught red-handed, however, is seen as progress in the campaign against a problem that has ranked Indonesia at 118th place among 176 economies in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index.

The Philippines, which placed 105th in the index alongside Algeria, Armenia, Bolivia, Gambia, Kosovo, Mali and Mexico, has ousted a chief justice through conviction by the Senate impeachment court. Merceditas Gutierrez also resigned as ombudsman after she was impeached by the House of Representatives.

Neither Gutierrez nor Renato Corona, however, faced criminal charges after their departure from office. We like loose ends; there is no appetite for sending the high and mighty to prison in this country.

Without closure, the accused can always claim innocence and political persecution.

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Last week I asked Indonesia’s amiable Ambassador Kristiarto Legowo about the secret of his country’s progress in the battle against corruption.

While emphasizing that their problem is far from eradicated, the ambassador cited three crucial steps: admit the problem, express remorse, and then fix it with commitment and deterrent measures.

I chatted with the singing ambassador at the PICC last Tuesday when Arellano University, as part of its 75th anniversary celebration, conferred an honorary doctorate of humanities on Dahlan Iskan, Indonesia’s minister for state enterprises. The university has a considerable number of Indonesian students.

Dahlan and I met several years ago when he was a journalist – or, more precisely as I would learn much later, the owner of Indonesia’s largest chain of local newspapers and broadcasting network. He later ventured into energy development, harnessing geothermal energy for small power plants. Indonesia’s reformist President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono tapped Dahlan to solve an energy crisis that affected Jakarta, and apparently liked the results enough to name him as state minister.

Today, with “SBY” barred from seeking a third consecutive five-year term in July next year, Dahlan is running for president of the world’s third largest democracy.

“Life is funny, isn’t it?” Dahlan told me with a wide grin when he saw my stunned reaction to his confirmation that he was seeking the presidency.

I quickly got over my surprise and asked him what his principal objective would be if he won. His reply: “We will be the ninth biggest economy in the world in five years.”

That will be seven notches above its current global economic ranking in terms of nominal GDP. Dahlan didn’t say top three or top five; nine is a precise target. Considering the compelling life story of this former newspaper reporter, it’s not something easily dismissed.

As Dahlan himself related to his audience at the conferment rites, he was born dirt-poor to a farmer and a housewife who died when he was a young boy after their family had sold all their meager furniture to pay for her treatment.

Dahlan and his siblings slept on a pandan mat on a dirt floor before they were separated because of poverty: his two elder sisters went to live with their uncle while he and his younger brother remained with their father.

School was a daily walk of six kilometers one way, which Dahlan said he did barefooted because there was no money for footwear until his sophomore year in high school, when his father finally managed to buy him a used pair of sneakers. To make the shoes last, Dahlan used them only on Mondays.

He recalled having only one school uniform so when it was time for laundry, he went swimming and fishing in the river until the clothing was dry.

But he never felt miserable, he said, because he didn’t know any other way of life. Everyone else lived in the same circumstances, and there was no mass media to tell them that life could be better.

“We thought everyone lived the way we did,” he recalled. “So how did we find entertainment? To us it meant having walks along the river, watching people fishing or observing high tide in the river, or playing puppeteer, with the… puppets (we made) from grass. (We made) music from our own voice, while friends (made) sounds on different musical instruments.”

This, Dahlan noted, was the difference between the poor of his days of innocence and the poor of the current age, who see others at shopping malls and on TV having more than what they have and feel profound discontent.

An effective government, Dahlan said, must address that discontent, and lift the poor to a higher income level.

His formula for transforming the poor into a new middle class is simple: “Work, work, and harder work. For this duty, I have to work, work and work to fulfill all Indonesian people’s hope.”

Around the world, people are more demanding of their government. How Indonesia is addressing that demand offers useful lessons for the Philippines.