Tatang Guritno, Jakarta – Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) says that there are three factors which have caused a decline in public trust in the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
ICW researcher Kurnia Ramadhana explained the first factor is the KPK leadership's poor level of integrity because of numerous ethics violations.
"So far there have already been two KPK leaders who have had to have dealings with the KPK's supervisory board, namely [KPK Chairperson] Firli Bahuri and [KPK Deputy Chairperson] Lili Pintauli Siregar", Ramadhana told Kompas.com on Thursday September 28.
Ramadhana said that this has resulted in the public no longer trusting the KPK which has consistently campaigned for the values of integrity. "Meanwhile even its leadership has had problems in terms of ethics", he said.
As has been reported, Bahuri was declared to have committed a minor ethical code violation for using a helicopter for personal reasons.
Siregar meanwhile was declared guilty of a serious ethical code violation after being proven to have communicated with the non-active mayor of Tanjungbalai, M Syahrial, who was being investigated by the KPK.
The second factor, according to Ramadhana was because the KPK's performance has rapidly declined under Bahuri's leadership.
"The number of sting operations (OTT) has dropped sharply, the poor quality case handling and frequent information leaks from within the KPK", he said.
Ramadhana said that the third factor in the decline in public trust was the controversial policies by the KPK leadership.
For example, in using the civics knowledge or nationalism test (TWK) as a condition for transforming KPK employees into state civil servants in accordance with revised KPK law, Law Number 19/2019 on the KPK.
"There have also been errors in formulating [corruption] prevention strategies, such as visiting and asking for video testimonies from convicted corruption suspects", he explained.
Based on these three factors, Ramadhana concluded that the condition of the KPK at present is not good at all.
In Ramadhana's view, the anti-graft agency has lost direction and strayed from the original goals for its establishment.
Ramadhana hopes that President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will take action to evaluate the KPK leadership and revoke policies which have the potential to undermine public trust.
"So from this the president must respond objectively to the decline in the level of public trust in the KPK", he said in conclusion.
As has been reported, the results of a survey by Indonesian Political Indicator (IPI) found that the level of public trust in the KPK had dropped sharply to fourth place.
On Sunday September 26, IPI Executive Director noted that the KPK used to always be in first or second place as a most trusted state institution.
Based on the IPI survey results, the TNI (Indonesian military) is now in first place as the most trusted public institution with a 95 percent level of trust.
This was followed by the president with an 82 percent level of trust, and in third place was the Indonesian police (Polri) with a 71 percent level of trust.
The KPK was in fourth place with only a 65 percent level of public trust.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Menurut ICW, Ini 3 Faktor Penyebab Turunnya Kepercayaan Publik pada KPK".]
