General Election Commission (KPU) Chairman Arief Budiman (center) together with the content director of the National Campaign Team of Joko Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin, Fiki Satari (far left); the planning director of the National Campaign Team of Joko Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin, Ario Bimo (second left); the deputy chairman of the National Winning Board of Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, Priyo Budi Santoso (second right); and the witness director of the National Winning Board of Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, Prasetyo Hadi (far right), issue a press statement after holding a meeting on the preparation of debates of the presidential and vice-presidential candidate pairs at the KPU building, Jakarta, on Dec. 28, 2018. The KPU together with the campaign teams of the presidential and vice-presidential candidate pairs agreed that the moderator who would guide the first debate of the 2019 presidential election would be Ira Koesno and Imam Priyono.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS — The public has great expectations for the two pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates facing off in the 2019 general election to resolve a number of large-scale corruption cases. Commitments to resolve these cases are expected to be made in the presidential election debates.
The first debate between the presidential and vice-presidential candidates participating in the 2019 general election will be held in Jakarta on Thursday (17/01/2019), and it will raise issues of law enforcement, corruption, human rights and terrorism.
A poll conducted by Kompas research and development section from Jan. 9-10, 2019 with 527 respondents from 17 major cities of Indonesia showed that, out of the four themes of the debate, the majority of respondents hopes that the resolution of large corruption cases will be the priority of the two candidate pairs. In the poll, 51.8 percent of the respondents expressed hope that the duo of Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Ma\'ruf Amin would make the settlement of major corruption cases a priority, followed by resolving human rights cases (15.7 percent), eradicating terrorism (13.5 percent) and other remaining issues. Meanwhile, 46.1 percent of the respondents wanted the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno pair to make the settlement of large corruption cases a priority, followed by the eradication of terrorism (15.2 percent) and the resolution of past human rights cases (14.8 percent).
A lecturer in criminal law at Parahyangan University, Bandung, Agustinus Pohan, said the public\'s desire to investigate large-scale corruption cases was a challenge that had to be responded to by the presidential and vice-presidential candidates in Thursday’s debate.
It was not enough for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates to offer work program breakthroughs and action plans. However, they would also have to display a strong political commitment not to interfere in law enforcement efforts to solve large corruption cases. "It is natural that the public wants breakthroughs in those cases. This is a task that until now has not been completed," Agustinus said when contacted in Jakarta on Tuesday (15/01/2019).
Large-scale corruption cases currently being investigated by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) include alleged corruption in connection with the Bank Indonesia liquidity assistance, the Bank Century case and the procurement of electronic identity cards.
Clean governance
A criminal law lecturer of the University of Indonesia, Indriyanto Seno Adji, said public expectations for closing corruption cases, including prominent large-scale ones, were high at every change of leadership. Corruption was an issue of priority in developing countries, including Indonesia. "Eradicating corruption is the basis for determining the success of the country\'s economic development and infrastructure in a broad sense," he said.
Indriyanto, who is also a former KPK commissioner, said that system-related and regulatory issues contributed to the slow investigation of large-scale corruption cases. However, the politicization of corruption cases sometimes also hampered the investigation.
"Therefore, there needs to be a reevaluation of the system and regulations to deal with corruption, especially the preventive approach widely integrated among law enforcement agencies. Concretely, building public trust in the law enforcers," Indriyanto said.
KPK deputy chairman Alexander Marwata said it was the responsibility (of political leaders) to resolve a number of corruption cases that until now had not been investigated. However, each case had a different degree of complexity, and complexity was particularly high for large-scale cases involving many parties.
With regard to this, commitment and political support from the head of state for eradicating corruption was urgently needed. In almost all countries that succeeded in eradicating corruption, there was a commitment and support from the head of state.
The spokesman of the Joko Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin election campaign team, Ace Hasan Syadzily, said what Jokowi could promise was not a guarantee that large cases would be resolved, but building the system and regulations that supported anticorruption institutions in investigating those cases.
A leading Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team member, Sudirman Said, said it was natural for the public to focus more on large-scale corruption cases. However, he said, all corruption cases were equally important, and many large cases began with the disclosure of small cases. (AGE/IAN)
