"‘Mr. Clean’ flexes some muscles."
"‘Mr. Clean’ flexes some muscles."
Indonesia is showing the way in the continuing global anti-corruption drive, at least on the basis of the Widodo administration’s latest operations in the past three weeks. Faced with endemic corruption problems like most developing countries, President Joko Widodo vowed that in his second term he would exert even more effort in ridding corruption in ASEAN’s biggest economy. As if on cue, the country’s anti-corruption commission known as Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK) snared two senior Cabinet members in the end of November and the first week of December.
On November 25, KPK officials detained Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Edhy Prabowo at the capital’s international airport upon his return from a working visit in the United States. The KPK’s Deputy Chairman, Nurul Ghufron, reported that Prabowo’s arrest was part of an ongoing investigation into the lucrative export of lobster larvae wherein favored companies reportedly ladled bribe money to be issued export permits.
Part of the bribe money was reportedly used by Prabowo to buy luxury items including Rolex watches and Tumi and Louis Vuitton bags in Hawaii while on official visit to the United States together with his wife and senior ministry officials.
As the world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia boasts of hundreds of fishing and spawning grounds among its 13,000 islands many of which remain untapped and undiscovered. In many of these areas, harvesting lobsters and their larvae from the wilds or, as is now being aggressively undertaken and supported by the government, cultivating them in huge farms have become highly profitable endeavors. These have also become fertile targets for smuggling. According to a national money laundering watchdog, in 2019 alone the illegal export of lobster hatchlings and larvae cost the country 900 billion rupiah (around $64 million) in lost revenue. That would not have happened at all if not for some bureaucratic legerdemain which prompted KPK officials to conduct further inquiry into this somewhat irregular development.
KPK investigators found out that earlier this year, Prabowo reversed a ban on the export of lobster larvae imposed by his predecessor in a bid to protect the declining wild population of the crustaceans. Instead of implementing a total ban, Prabowo imposed a partial one, ostensibly
to maintain Indonesia’s share in the growing lobster larvae export market mainly in Vietnam, China and Singapore where they are raised and subsequently sold for considerable margins. Investigators smelled something fishy with that scheme wherein 30 percent of the lobster larvae which is huge by any reckoning was being earmarked for export when the entire exercise was supposed to give time for the spawning grounds to regain lost ground and ensure enough larvae for the growing network of domestic cultivators in aquaculture farms which would have provided more employment to the locals and enhance the productivity of domestic farms.
It turned out, the 70-30 allocation scheme was a ruse concocted by Prabowo’s office to favor certain individuals and groups close to the minister’s political party. An investigation by the news magazine Tempo found out that immediately after Prabowo issued the reversal order, his office promptly granted export permits to 31 companies, some of whose owners, directors or executives were politicians from the Great Indonesia Movement Party, or Gerindra, the party of retired General and now Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto who ran for president against Widodo. Subianto and his partymates were subsequently invited to join the administration in a bid to unify the various factions in parliament and ensure a super majority.
Barely two weeks after Prabowo’s arrest, Julian Batubara, Indonesia’s social affairs minister was also arrested for allegedly embezzling more than 1 million dollars in Covid-19 aid funds,
KPK Chairman Firli Bahun advised that Batubara and two of his subordinates were accused of accepting 17 billion rupiah (US$1.2 million) in kickbacks from companies appointed to supply food aid packages to Indonesians affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Reportedly, the ministry asked for a fee of 10,000 rupiah (less than one dollar) for every food pack in a COVID-19 aid programme worth 5.9 trillion rupiah.
These latest arrests somehow gave a breather to President Widodo’s government whose “Mr. Clean” image has been tarnished somehow with the earlier arrests of two Cabinet members immediately after he took office for a second term. In April 2019, Batubara’s predecessor, Idrus Marham, was sentenced to three years in prison for accepting bribes from a businessman in return for the rights to develop a coal-fired power plant project in Sumatra. Then, in June of this year, former Youth and Sport Minister Imam Nahrawi was also sentenced to seven years imprisonment after he was found guilty of embezzling money from a National Sports Committee grant.
Beaming with confidence, Widodo vowed to pursue his anti-corruption drive even more rigorously, saying in a statement that “We respect the ongoing legal process at the KPK. We respect it. And I believe KPK implements transparency, open, and professional work. The government consistently supports the efforts to prevent and eradicate corruption.”
Whether he will be able to hold on to this renewed effort to vigorously go after corrupt officials and their cohorts, in and out of government, remains to be seen given the fact that the arrested and convicted ministers are senior members of the parties within Widodo’s super majority coalition. How he will be able to handle the expected political fallout and regain public confidence in his administration will surely test his mettle in the days to come. Suffice it to say that with these latest arrests, “Mr. Clean” has somehow regained his footing and the public’s trust for nor now.