SBY’s Party Is Burning Down the House

This article was written while doing the research on public policy of Singapore. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

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SBY’s Party Is Burning Down the House
Yohanes Sulaiman | July 13, 2011

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (Center) with Democrat Chairman Anas Urbaningrum (Left) and Mohammad Jafar Hafsah. (Antara Photo/Widodo S. Jusuf)

While discussing the Democratic Party’s proverbial slow-moving train wreck, a colleague of mine remarked that the Nazaruddin case was akin to someone trying to get rid of a rat by burning down the house. The rat escapes, while the house is burned to the ground.

It is an apt description of the upheavals in the party, with frequent new revelations about how entrenched corruption is in its ranks. The brands of both the Democratic Party and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s have been forever tarnished.

Regardless of whether accusations involving Muhammad Nazaruddin — both those leveled against him and by him — are correct, the fiasco seems to prove the public’s worst fears, that corruption is entrenched in the political elite. Even in a government led by a party that campaigned under the slogan “Say No to Corruption,” a business-as-usual approach continues.

Still, the question remains, why is the house on fire at all? Corruption happens all over the world, even in Singapore, a country so regulated that there is a rule on the mandatory flushing of public toilets.

In 1966, Tan Kia Gan, then Singapore’s minister for national development, was investigated for accepting bribes worth 70,000 Singapore dollars ($57,000 in today’s terms). In 1976, the minister for the environment, Wee Toon Boon, was accused of accepting bribes worth more than 800,000 Singapore dollars from an Indonesian businessman. And in 1986, another minister for national development, Teh Cheang Wan, was investigated for accepting two bribes totaling a million Singapore dollars.

Yet such corruption scandals did not tarnish Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, nor Singapore’s stellar reputation as one of the cleanest nations on earth.

In Indonesia, on the other hand, the latest survey by the Indonesian Survey Circle found that only 47 percent of respondents approved of the government’s enforcement of the law, even though in October 2009, the Indonesian Survey Institute found that 84 percent of people approved of the government’s attempts to eradicate corruption.

The differences between Yudhoyono and Lee lie in the degree of decisiveness shown by the duo and their management of public perceptions.

In Singapore’s case, all three high-profile corruption cases were solved decisively and to popular satisfaction. Lee himself was instrumental in removing all of the ministers, regardless of their high positions in the government. Tan was stripped of his public appointments even though a witness refused to implicate him. Wee was convicted and imprisoned. Teh committed suicide before he was formally charged.

It is notable that the prime minister was instrumental in ensuring that these suspects were brought to justice. Instead of sitting idly by or intervening in favor of the defendants, Lee fostered an image of a stern leader unhappy with graft and working against the defendants by first stripping them of their immunity from prosecution and then by letting the wheel of justice move uninterrupted. When the defendants were judged guilty, he promptly stripped them of their positions. Not surprisingly, the image of Singapore as a serious, squeaky-clean place remains untarnished.

In Indonesia, Yudhoyono’s authority is steadily undermined by his own passivity in dealing with corruption scandals. In the Bank Century case, many people are convinced that former Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was a scapegoat to save the Democratic Party. The presidential pardon of Aulia Pohan — a senior Bank Indonesia official and the father-in-law of one of Yudhoyono’s sons — smacked of nepotism and cronyism.

In the case of Nazaruddin, the party’s former treasurer, there have been official missteps and governmental agencies seem to be trying to outdo each other in destroying any remaining public trust in them. Nazaruddin’s ability to leave for Singapore raised eyebrows. This was followed by the revelation that Singapore had actually signed an extradition treaty and was waiting for Indonesia to follow suit.

When Yudhoyono last week berated his ministers, claiming they did only 50 percent of what he asked of them, the dressing down elicited collective yawns of “been there, done that.”

This was not the first time Yudhoyono had berated his ministers in public and yet all of them remained in place. Thus, instead of scoring political points, people saw it as a political gimmick to threaten other parties not to take advantage of the turmoil within the Democratic Party.

With official missteps occurring on a regular basis and the Nazaruddin case exposing corruption within the Democratic Party, it is no wonder that so many people are seriously questioning Yudhoyono’s true commitment to eradicating graft.

In contrast, Lee was known as a trigger-happy leader, willing to fire anyone who performed below his expectations. Not surprisingly, even today Lee remains influential in Singapore’s politics.

What really matters is whether people believe that the government will follow through on its promises. Many people believe that Nazaruddin’s accusations are truthful, as it vindicates their perception of the political elite.

In essence, the house is not burning due to a single rat. Rather, the house is burning because of a series of missteps by Yudhoyono and his party and a public weariness over corruption among the nation’s leaders.