Reflection: Once "tukang catut" always tukang catut. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IF01Ae02.html
Jun 1, 2007 A spot on Indonesian leader's clean hands By Bill Guerin JAKARTA - Just when it seemed Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was making significant progress in tackling the country's endemic culture of corruption, he and Vice President Jusuf Kalla have been linked to allegations that they received illegal off-budget funds to finance their 2004 election campaign. Opposition politician Amien Rais, the onetime champion of the reform movement that helped bring about dictator Suharto's 1998 downfall, admitted he personally received about US$60,000 in illicit campaign funds through the Fisheries and Marine Resources Ministry, formerly headed by Rokhmin Dahuri. Rais dropped a potentially bigger bombshell when he claimed that Yudhoyono and Kalla also received illicit funds from Dahuri and that the General Elections Commission had evidence to substantiate his claims. Dahuri is currently on trial in a Jakarta court over alleged abuse of public funds, and on the stand he has owned up to channeling about Rp11.5 billion (US$1.2 million) from the ministry budget to at least four political parties between April 2002 and March 2005. Both politicians have denied the charges, with Yudhoyono referring to the allegations as "slander". "I and Jusuf Kalla clearly never received [funds] and clearly the claims are misleading and unhealthy," he said at a press conference last week. Yudhoyono and Rais later met on Sunday for 10 minutes and appeared to agree to leave the case in the hands of the Corruption Eradication Commission rather than sparring in the public domain. But the political controversy the allegations have already generated in the media have to some degree undermined public perceptions about the Yudhoyono government's corruption-busting credentials, crucially as the country enters a new election cycle with presidential polls scheduled for 2009. Significantly, Yudhoyono was elected on a clean-hands ticket in 2004, underlining the importance the Indonesian electorate then and likely now puts on corruption issues. While the business-minded Kalla has recently attracted media attention over possible conflicts of interest related to his family's non-competitive bidding and winning big-ticket government projects, the more bureaucratic Yudhoyono has until now remained above the fray. If public perceptions turn against his government, several opposition candidates, including from the main Islamic party, are poised to present themselves as graft-busters to voters. People's Consultative Assembly Speaker Hidayat Nurwahid said this week, "The president and the vice president could be impeached if they are proven guilty of breaching the law." That seems unlikely, because Kalla's Golkar party dominates the legislative body, but the risk is that Yudhoyono and Kalla become in the popular imagination associated with the corrupt old ways they promised on election to reform. Of course, this would come as no surprise to Indonesia watchers who remember the furor in November 2004 when Election Supervision Committee head Kommarudin Hidayat went on record as saying investigations had revealed evidence of more than 1,000 serious administrative and criminal violations of election-campaign regulations allegedly involving all parties and presidential candidates. Bribes, kickbacks and phantom donors The most serious offenses - including fictitious donors, vote-buying and bribing officials - were attributed to both then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Party of Struggle and the military-affiliated Golkar party, of which Kalla is chairman, according to Kommarudin Hidayat at the time. But Rais' allegations represent the first time both Yudhoyono and Kalla in particular have been directly accused of electoral fraud. Draining state funds for electoral purposes is nothing new for Indonesia. In 1999, Bank Bali paid local corporation PT Era Giat Prima (EGP) a "commission" of Rp546 billion (US$60 million) to help it collect Rp946 billion from the state foodstuffs monopoly, Bulog, which owned it money. Prosecutors later said the commission went into the Golkar party's coffers and helped finance president B J Habibie's 1999 election win. EGP was partly owned by Golkar's then-deputy treasurer, Setya Novanto. Golkar was later instrumental in pressing for a probe into the next election scandal, known as Bulogate I, which entailed the embezzlement of Rp35 billion from the company and eventually led to former president Abdurrahman Wahid's political downfall in July 2001. Bulogate II, disclosed by Wahid's National Awakening Party, surfaced when former Bulog chief Rahardi Ramelan told prosecutors he gave state funds for a food-relief program to former defense minister and military commander Wiranto, who was a presidential candidate in the 2004 campaign. Megawati's reformist reputation was also sullied by a counter-trade transaction to buy Russian-made Sukhoi jet fighters and Mi-35 helicopters. The trade minister at the time, Rini Soewandi, tasked Bulog with executing the $129 million deal between Indonesia and Russia, though she insisted it was the president herself who gave the green light to what was later ruled an "improper" deal. In less than three years in office, Yudhoyono has arguably achieved more political and economic reform than the other three post-Suharto governments combined. And his corruption-busting has won his administration kudos both internationally and, albeit to a lesser degree, domestically. He recently breathed life into efforts to go after the Suhartos - which, of course, raises questions about the timing of the allegations being leveled against him and Kalla. Last week, for example, Yudhoyono signed a special decree ordering state prosecutors to file a civil lawsuit against former president Suharto, 85. The former strongman has consistently denied allegations of illegally siphoning off some $600 million through seven foundations and he has in the past been declared too ill to stand trial. New Attorney General Hendarman Supanji, appointed by Yudhoyono during a recent cabinet reshuffle, is also pursuing cases against Suharto's top son, Tommy Suharto. Some contend that Yudhoyono's move against the Suhartos signals a renewed will to pursue his so-called "war against corruption" at the highest-possible levels. At the same time, there are others who question whether his move may have been preemptive to divert attention from the charges leveled against him. The still-unsubstantiated charges could not have come at a worse time for Yudhoyono's government. Recent polls show a sharp decline in his popularity, which fell from a 67% approval rating at the end of last year to only 49% in March. That decline has been led by public perceptions that his government's economic-reform programs have failed to lift the masses out of poverty. That was notably one big reason Indonesian voters dumped the self-proclaimed reformist Megawati for the self-proclaimed clean hands of Yudhoyono at the 2004 polls. Yet exactly nine years after Suharto's downfall and the birth of Indonesia's democratic era, it's still open whether any Indonesian politician can remain completely above the fray of money politics. Bill Guerin, a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has been in Indonesia for more than 20 years, mostly in journalism and editorial positions. He specializes in Indonesian political, business and economic analysis, and hosts a weekly television political talk show, Face to Face, broadcast on two Indonesia-based satellite channels. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] . (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
