A number of anticorruption comics and illustrations are displayed at an event entitled #akukpk (Comic Action for the Corruption Eradication Commission - KPK) in the Jakarta Creative Hub, Jakarta on Sunday (20/8). The event, which was supported by the Indonesian Cartoonists Association (Pakarti), was also marked by a KPK off-air discussion with the public, which has thus far supported the KPK through social media.
Amid the political pressure and attacks on investigators and commissioners of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the institution continues its fight to eradicate corruption in this country.
In the latest case, the KPK arrested a corruption court judge, Dewi Suryana, and a substitute court clerk, Hendra Kurniawan, in the Bengkulu District Court, on Wednesday and Thursday (September 6-7, 2017). In Bengkulu province, the KPK had previously arrested Bengkulu governor Ridwan Mukti.
We are grateful that the Supreme Court (MA) is willing to be cooperative and work together with the KPK to clean up the judiciary. We quote a statement by the MA’s junior chairman for supervision, Sunarto, who said that the arrest was part of a "clean-up" operation in the judicial environment. Later, as quoted by this daily, Sunarto also said, "We have worked hard to provide guidance. If they cannot be fixed, yes, they should be destroyed."
The statement of Sunarto is harsh and firm! We hope the strong statement is for real and a part of the MA\'s indignation against corruption in the judiciary. Firm leadership in combating corruption is needed when the virus of corruption is getting increasingly out of control. When the perpetrators of corruption hide behind the robes of power, they hold to formal legal principles, the presumption of innocence, but smash the principles of morality and appropriateness.
Corruption, which impoverishes the nation and violates socio-economic and cultural rights, has to be made a common enemy of the nation, and, not the other way around, making the KPK a common enemy whose authority has to be curtailed. Its commissioners have been reported to the police, its investigator was doused with acid and has been accused of defamation. Meanwhile, the state seems as if it has not played any significant role.
The fight against corruption is a struggle to wipe out the comfort of the elite. Those who make a living from economic corruption. They have the comfort to enjoy commission money, gratuities amounting to billions of rupiah, service money, and money to trade justice. It is hardly surprising in the face of the KPK’s actions, whose presence shakes the establishment, resistance appears. This resistance can appear through political acts, legal acts or dreadful physical attacks. Meanwhile, the state chooses not to take up any stance or any position.
An Indonesia that is clean or at least increasingly free from corruption is the ideal of reform. Indeed the KPK has to immediately clean itself up because the institution also has problems. When there is no longer any real support from the political elite, the KPK can only rely on public support to continue the fight to eradicate corruption in this country. Keep clean, the KPK, and keep on fighting to carry out the mandate of Reform since 1998.
