Hi folks, welcome to another special report NuiceLetter. This time, we are focusing on a very important but very complicated subject: corruption. More specifically, how the once respected and beloved Corruption Eradication Commission, known as the KPK, could soon lose its credibility and its best people.
It is no secret that Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Hell, Transparency International even ranked us 102nd cleanest country in the world out of 180 countries surveyed in its annual Corruption Perception Index. We ranked lower than Ethiopia (94) and Colombia (92).
But no matter how bad things are, we can always count on the KPK to catch them crooked politicians and corrupt public officials. Well, we used to.
Questionable Questions
On May 5, the KPK announced that 75 of its investigators and employees have failed the so-called “Tes Wawasan Kebangsaan” (Nationalism Comprehension Test) and thus cannot be granted civil servant’s status.
The KPK promised that they will retain the 75. However, according to the latest version of the Law on the KPK, revised in September 2019, all employees and investigators of the KPK must be civil servants within two years since the law was enacted, which means these people could get the boot by September 2021.
And these are no ordinary KPK employees and investigators. Rumored to be among those who failed the test was Novel Baswedan, a senior KPK investigator who has brought down judges, ministers, members of parliaments and powerful politicians. He was so good at his job, Novel was the target of an acid attack which left him visually impaired in 2016.
Also reported as failing the test were chief of the KPK’s worker’s union, Yudi Purnomo and a number of other senior investigators.
Novel was also openly critical towards his superiors and the state of the antigraft body. He had been repeatedly sanctioned by his bosses who appeared bent on getting rid of people like himself.
The KPK swore there was no foul play but several people who took the test, including Novel, pointed that there was something odd with the “agree/disagree” questions found in it. Among the questions were: “all Chinese are the same”, “religion is manmade”, “blasphemers must be sentenced to death” and “homosexuals must be criminalized.”
The participants were then asked to write down what they think about a number of topics including the Indonesian Communist Party, the Islamic Defenders Front, Government Policy and LGBT.
KPK chairman Firli Bahuri said the questions were formulated by, among others, the Military Strategic Intelligence Agency, the Army’s Psychology Department, the National Intelligence Agency, and National Counter Terrorism Agency.
Not involved in the formulation of the test were the Ministry of State Apparatus, Empowerment, and Bureaucratic Reform and the National Civil Service Agency (BKN), Bureaucratic Reform minister Tjahjo Kumolo told Kompas. The BKN is supposed to be the one organizing the test.
If you think the whole thing is a bit sus, you are not alone. Various academics, activists, former KPK commissioners, and current KPK employees also think that the whole thing is sus.
How did we get here?
Since it was established in December 2003, the KPK has brought down ministers, party leaders, members of parliament, top judges, police generals and governors. And the KPK rarely loses its case.
So it is no wonder that the KPK has many enemies with the police often being on the other side. As long as the KPK has existed, there have been people trying to undermine it, with the 2009 gecko vs gator conflict being the first most significant and sensational one. They have tried to press trumped-up criminal charges against its leaders. They have also tried to defang the KPK by stripping some of its powers. Each time they tried, street protests erupted because public support for the KPK was very strong and these attempts failed.
That all changed in September 2019. Out of the blue, the parliament (which had dozens of its members jailed by the KPK for numerous corruption cases) formulated, deliberated and approved changes to the law governing the KPK.
The whole process took just 13 days, which is weird considering that there are many bills which got deliberated for months or years without ever being passed into law. What’s even more problematic, the revision was passed in a plenary attended by just 80 out of 560 MPs.
Jokowi could have intervened, but instead he agreed that the Law on KPK should be revised. The palace provided its input to parliament, less than 24 hours after it made the suggestion to revise the law, even though by law the palace can take up to 60 days to do so.
Jokowi has claimed that the revision will strengthen the KPK. In reality, the revised law paved the way for the creation of a KPK oversight board, members of whom are hand selected and appointed by the president. This board is so powerful, investigators must seek its approval everytime the KPK wants to conduct wiretapping and searches.
The revised law also mandated every KPK employee to become a civil servant, a requirement which activists and academics believe would jeopardize the KPK’s independence and impartiality. The law also allows the KPK to drop charges after two years. Previously it couldn't do that. Once a person is charged the KPK must investigate the case all the way to court.
That’s not all. Around the same time, the same parliament approved Jokowi’s pick of KPK commissioners. The parliament named one of them as chairman of the KPK, a police general named Firli Bahuri. The thing is, Firli was once found guilty of ethical violation during his time as the KPK’s enforcement deputy.
Now the KPK under Firli’s tenure is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, Firli’s KPK have arrested two ministers (although that can be attributed to the hard work of its investigators) but at the same time the KPK halted all investigation into a major corruption case (the first time it ever dropped a case) and it can’t seem to catch one fairly unknown politician from South Sulawesi who has been on the run for more than a year.
Also under Firli, the KPK arrested one of its own for receiving a bribe from a mayor who is the target of a corruption investigation.
KPK Law Stays, Court Says
Many people aren’t happy with the revised Law on the KPK. Which is why they petitioned the Constitutional Court to repeal it.
On May 4, the Constitutional Court (which had two of its judges jailed by the KPK) refused to repeal the law completely despite arguments that the law was passed unusually quick and done without public consultation.
One out of the nine judges hearing the case, Wahiduddin Adams thought that the law should be repealed, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the whole circumstances in which the law was passed were sus. He was outvoted tho, so the law stays.
The court however agreed to repeal some of the articles in the revised law. Now, KPK investigators no longer need to seek approval from the presidentially appointed-KPK oversight board if they want to wiretap someone or have their places searched. They only need to be informed but no need to seek approval.
The whole thing about KPK employees needing to be civil servants and take weird ass tests made by irrelevant bodies, stays.
So What’s Next?
One pundit said that the KPK is as good as dead now and we might as well disband the antigraft body.
But we feel we still need the KPK and there’s still hope. We just need people to wake up to the fact that there is something foul about this whole situation and do something about it. There’s still time for us to make sure that these awesome KPK investigators can keep catching bad guys.
Jokowi has not spoken about this whole mess and he has said that he wants to see the KPK strengthened. There is no saying what he will do about it but one thing’s for sure: whatever he does, whether the KPK will truly be strengthened or undermined further, it will be his legacy.