Gerindra Party presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto has two thumbs up after casting his ballot during the legislative elections in Bogor, West Java on April 9, 2014. (Reuters Photo/Supri)
Jakarta. Now that it’s official there will only be two candidates running for president in the July 9 election, scrutiny of their plans for Indonesia continues to grow.
Politicians and analysts are competing to express opinions about the respective presidential candidates’ vision and mission statements, with some praising them while others are more critical.
It now seems that the leadership of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), whose job it is to solve major graft cases in the country, also did not want to miss the opportunity to have its opinions heard.
Bambang Widjojanto, deputy chairman of the KPK, criticized plans put forward by Prabowo Subianto, presidential hopeful for the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra), related to fighting corruption.
Prabowo has said he would increase the number of investigators to strengthen the antigraft body. However, Bambang said fighting corruption was not only a matter of increasing the number of investigators.
He said Prabowo did not fully grasp the magnitude of the challenges of fighting graft.
He added that opposition to corruption, collusion and nepotism should become a stance, attitude and perspective, which should be internalized and formulated in presidential candidate’s work programs.
“Anti-corruption [measures] should be mainstreamed into ideas, programs, targets, strategies and perspectives in the process in order to increase the state’s income and to curb corrupt attitudes and behavior,” he said.
“The implementation and supervision of this should be made more accountable and the people should be involved intensively and systematically,” Bambang elaborated.
The KPK deputy chairman expressed his hope that the future president would also introduce integrity testing for new recruits at government ministries.
“The KPK hopes for strong commitment from the presidential and vice presidential candidates to conduct integrity tests in the recruitment and promotion processes in ministries,” Bambang said.
He said integrity tests would prevent collusion and nepotism.
Without collusion and nepotism there would be no room for companies belonging to the families of state employees to obtain government projects.
Bambang further called on the future president to oppose every attempt aimed at weakening the fight against corruption. He added that every ministry should have a gratification control unit.
He was not the first KPK leader to got involved in political matters.
Recently, KPK chairman Abraham Samad was reported to have approached Joko Widodo presidential hopeful for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, in an effort to become his running mate.
Other KPK leaders were of the opinion that Samad had violated the agency’s code of conduct and initially planned to subject him to a disciplinary process. The agency later canceled the plan and said it would only seek clarification from Samad with regard to his media statements.
By Rizky Amelia on 10:00 am Jun 06, 2014
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