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Indonesia's corruption-busters take on the tomcats
Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:17pm EST
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By Sara Webb
JAKARTA (Reuters) - When Indonesia's president delivered his independence day speech to parliament, stressing the need to eradicate corruption, it was clear to many onlookers that the biggest problem was staring him in the face.
In Indonesia, members of parliament top the charts when it comes to corrupt practices.
They're known in the media as "kucing garong" -- tomcats, who prowl the neighborhood in search of something to steal -- and the public here is treated to an almost daily diet of news about corrupt officials who skim, steal, or extort.
For decades, corruption has been a way of life in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
It permeates almost every level of society, reducing the country's appeal to a wide array of foreign investors, and curbing Indonesia's potential for growth and development so that it lags far behind its Asian rivals, such as China and Malaysia.
With the fall of former president Suharto in 1998, and the move toward greater democracy and regional autonomy, the situation grew even worse, according to some business people, because with more potential decision-makers, that often meant that more officials had to be paid off.
True, Indonesia has pushed through a host of political, economic and social reforms in the past decade, but it's only quite recently that it has made more progress in tackling corruption.
CRACKDOWN
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won Indonesia's first direct election for president in 2004 on pledges to crack down on corruption. By tackling graft, he expected to attract foreign investment, boost economic growth and create more jobs.
In the past couple of years, Indonesia's anti-corruption agency has taken on scores of officials, from central bankers to ministers, procurement officials to prosecutors.
Even Yudhoyono's relatives are considered fair game: his eldest son's father-in-law was detained as part of a corruption investigation involving the central bank. The fact that Yudhoyono expressed regret but did not interfere in the case has been widely praised and may have won him some political support.
Officials at the agency, known by its Indonesian acronym KPK, have won plenty of media attention with their James Bond-like exploits.
They have tapped suspects' phones and gone under cover to catch their prey, nailing businessmen in hotel lifts while they were in the act of handing over briefcases stuffed with cash, or in luxury hotel rooms with their accomplices.
The taped conversations between prosecutors and businessmen or women discussing pay-offs have been played in court, with one recording even making the rounds as a ringtone for mobile phones.
Yudhoyono's finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, has taken on two notoriously corrupt departments -- tax and customs -- increasing officials' pay in an attempt to reduce the temptation to steal and reinforcing the message that corruption won't be tolerated. Continued...
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