House Not Yet Able to Eradicate Internal Corruption
Monday, 11 December, 2006 | 15:20 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The accountability and transparency mechanism of the House of Representatives (DPR), carried out by the DPR Honorary Board, is not thorough enough to eradicate corruption taking place within parliament.

“The Honorary Board handles more issues that are related to public morality, such as Yahya Zaini,” said Adnan Topan Husodo, a member of the Working Board of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW)

He said this in response to the results of Transparency International Indonesia’s survey that states that parliament, both at central and regional levels, is the most corrupt institution in 2006.

The scale of parliament corruption index rose from 4.0 last year (second place) to 4.2.

Adnan cited several alleged DPR corruption cases which apparently vanished or whose legal processes stopped, such as the case of education vouchers distribution by DPR Chairman Agung Laksono and the case of gratification by Akil Mochtar in the process of expanding Sintang Regency, West Kalimantan—which has been reported to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Gayus Lumbuun, DPR’s Honorary Board Deputy Chairman, disputed the statement that the Honorary Board has not functioned as regards monitoring members.

He explained that between January 2005 and July 2006, the Honorary Board had handled 75 complains related to misbehavior.

“Including ones that were classified as corruption,” he said.

Dari jumlah itu, sebanyak 52 kasus sudah dijatuhi sanksi beragam, seperti teguran dan pemindahan dari alat kelengkapan DPR. "Termasuk sanksi pemecatan, yaitu terhadap Azidin," ujarnya.

From that number, 52 cases have been imposed by various sanctions including warning and transfer from DPR’s instruments. “Including discharging sanction, to Azidin,” he said.

According to Djoko Susilo, a member of DPR Commission for Defense, the legislative institution appears to be corrupt because budget amounts and usage are often exposed by the media.

He went on to say that currently DPR’s budget is only 0.3 percent of the State Budget.

“Less than one percent, so how can it be said to be corrupt?”
However, according to Saldi Isra, an activist of a non-governmental organization that revealed the corruption at the West Sumatra Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD), corruption at parliament occurs in many forms, including natural disaster promoters, regional budget promoters, region expansion process and composing laws process which always goes with money politics.

“Such as the case of alleged corruption (gratification) of the Aceh Bill special committee,” said this Forum of Experts Meeting member.

Tito Sianipar, Aqida Swamurti and Zed Abidien