Corruption: Koran Scandal Shows It’s Time to Clean House

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Corruption: Koran Scandal Shows It’s Time to Clean House
Yohanes Sulaiman | July 09, 2012

Is nothing sacred anymore? That’s a predictable reaction upon hearing that the Corruption Eradication Commission has named Golkar Party legislator Zulkarnaen Djabar a suspect in a graft case related to the procurement of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. 

This entire scandal again feeds the perception of our politicians being so out of touch with ordinary people and having such self-importance that they think themselves to be above the law — not only the law of the state but also the law of the divine. 

As usual, everyone expressed their shock, surprise, anger and contrition over the whole sordid affair. 

Kemas Roni, the lead prosecutor of the antigraft body, known as the KPK, declared his shock that someone was audacious enough to steal money from a Koran procurement project. 

Nasaruddin Umar, the deputy minister of religious affairs, said he was surprised that the scandal had happened in his ministry, adding that he had made it clear to ministry officials that corruption would not be tolerated. 

Golkar, seeing that this scandal has the potential to wreck its plans for the general elections in 2014, has already moved into damage-control mode with Nurul Arifin, the party’s deputy secretary general, asking Zulkarnaen to at least temporarily step down from the House of Representatives. 

Irianto Syafiudin, the head of Golkar’s West Java branch, was more blunt, calling for Zulkarnaen to be fired. 

Zulkarnaen cried mea culpa . The entire case, he said, was a warning from God that he needed to increase his “vertical communication.” 

By the close of play, however, life will likely go on as it has these past few years. Already Abdul Karim, an official in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, has accused the media of blowing up the case and insinuated that certain interested parties were trying to discredit the ministry. He warned that should the ministry be closed down, Muslims would suffer. 

That reaction suggests the ministry is more interested in saving itself than cleaning up its act. This despite the fact that the Koran procurement scandal is no doubt only the tip of the corruption iceberg in the ministry. 

Take the example of the corruption allegations surrounding the hajj pilgrimage organized by the ministry. As early as 2009, Indonesia Corruption Watch uncovered evidence suggesting money set aside for the pilgrimage had been misappropriated. 

On Jan. 6, 2009, the anticorruption watchdog reported that Muhammad Maftuh Basyuni, at the time the religious affairs minister, improperly received hundreds of millions of rupiah from the hajj pilgrimage fund. 

Considering how much money is involved in the hajj management program — about Rp 39 trillion ($4.1 billion) — the Rp 35 billion Koran procurement scandal is peanuts by any reasonable comparison. But despite the accumulating evidence, the investigation in the management of the pilgrimage has gone nowhere, even though the KPK itself on Nov. 29, 2011, declared the Ministry of Religious Affairs to be the most corrupt institution in Indonesia. 

In addition, there have been revelations that lawmakers from House Commission VIII, which oversees religious affairs, received thousands of Korans from the ministry. While Ida Fauziah, the head of Commission VIII, argued that distributing Korans was a good deed, the problem is that receiving them for free from the ministry smacks of conflict of interest and is certainly morally questionable. 

In most democratic nations, rules are made to address these kinds of issues, imposing limits and bans on gifts that a lawmaker can receive from any government or non-government institution. 

One cannot help but notice that efforts to clean up the hajj fund management have stalled in the House. 

The legislature has not approved the creation of a commission to supervise the hajj pilgrimage and there is no law in place to regulate the management of the pilgrimage fund. 

With so much money flying around and the credibility of both the House and the Ministry of Religious Affairs at stake, both institutions would be well advised to start cleaning up their houses and behaving more transparently. And at the same time, they should avoid anything that could be construed as a conflict of interest. 

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Yakty-yak

11:57am Jul 10, 2012

@Yohanes I immensely enjoy your candor and analysis, however your conclusions are, invariably, always the same, namely, expecting the very malfeasant politicians, parties, institutions, and bureaucratic agencies that systematically perpetuate these corrupt practices to clean up their own mess:

"....both institutions would be well advised to start cleaning up their houses and behaving more transparently."

This conclusion, like many similar ones you've expressed previously, that call upon the National Police, AGO, DPR, similar actors to "clean up their own house - is naive at best, academic apathy at worst.

Its not the the latter as you come across as an intellectual activist in the best sense of the spirit but your conclusions belie your analysis. These institutions have zero incentive to "increase transparency"; and given the impotence and complicity of Indonesia's regulatory/enforcement bodies the shadows in which these corrupt practices exist will only grown longer.

exbrit

12:31pm Jul 10, 2012

It has been time to clean house for a long time but there is a shortage of cleaners. The birds of a feather are already downplaying the case, worrying that they may be next in line. As Yohanes Sulaiman suggests, nothing is likely to change because the house is not serious about cleansing itself

Yohanes-Sulaiman

2:20pm Jul 10, 2012

@Yakty-yak: Thanks for your comments. I am aware that people are starting to get tired of my tireless and tiresome suggestions for the institutions to self-reform.

Frankly, I am tempted to just advocate the Ministry of Religion to abolish itself, because I find that it creates more troubles than it worth, but that might draw lots of trolls from the woodwork.

Plus, I kinda find it useful to soften the blows from my criticisms that sometimes some people find rattling and it seems that such ending is expected, if you read the op-ed in Indonesian newspapers.

Still, I have to concede that I personally am also tired of having that kind of ending.

Probably it is best, next time, if I get rid the redundant last paragraph "advise" and just focus on the analysis.

@exbrit: shortage of cleaners and everyone profits under this stupid system.

Normalaatsra

4:39pm Jul 10, 2012

Time for another reshuffle

Yakty-yak

8:07am Jul 11, 2012

@Yohanes: To reiterate I very much enjoy your writings and analysis. My intention was to simply highlight a relatively weak conclusion at odds with the balance of your spot-on analysis. Regardless of audience I would strongly encourage you to finish with a bite rather than a whimper to drive your analysis home, critics and trolls be damned. As the saying goes "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".

By the way I do occasionally read bahasa op-ed pages but primarily that of Tempo, which doesn't shy away either in its analysis or conclusions of calling out those that are shamelessly corrupt regardless of reaction - as evidenced by past aggressions.

Keep up your writings.

Pelan2

9:29am Jul 11, 2012

@Yohanes - With the current and next generation, going into government service, having known nothing but this style of corrupt leadership, where does Pak Yohanes expect the change to come from, and from which segment of the society - Trims.. PS Thanks for your articles, always good to read..

Yohanes-Sulaiman

1:23pm Jul 11, 2012

Thanks to both Pelan2 and Yakty-yak for your kind comments.

@Yakty-yak: I will try to address those nice criticism in my next article, hopefully up in a few days.

@Pelan2: The change should come from two sides: the top and the bottom -- on the bottom side, the professionalization of a couple of NGOs, notably ICW is a much welcomed development, and we need more grass root movement pushing for accountability. Unfortunately what often happens is that the NGOs are sloppy in both their researches and/or pretty ineffective in garnering public support outside of just the general idea of anti-corruption.

From the top, I still believe that leadership matters, that a strong executive could help shaping the system. Unfortunately, they are cut from the same piece of cloth and as a result, we don't have too many good people on the top.