IN INDONESIA, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, many
politicians hold open houses on the first morning of the post-Ramadan
Idul Fitri
holiday to greet supporters and well wishers, before spending the
afternoon with their own families. Last week, lawmaker Muhammad
Nazaruddin proved to be an exception, spending August 31st in police
detention facility just outside the capital Jakarta on corruption
charges while his wife, also a suspect, remained on the run abroad with
the couple’s children. Mr Nazaruddin, who is now the most celebrated
detainee in a country bursting with high-profile corruption suspects,
marked his 33rd birthday in jail on August 26th.
Only
four months ago, the wealthy, handsome businessman-cum-politician was a
high-flying member of parliament. It all came crashing down in early
May after Mr Nazaruddin was implicated in a scandal involving the
construction of athletes’ dormitories for the upcoming Southeast Asia
Games, which Indonesia is hosting. National and provincial government
officials, an executive from a company run by Mr Nazaruddin that won the
construction tender, as well as a fellow lawmaker from the Democratic
Party, have also been arrested or implicated. On May 23rd, a humbled Mr
Nazaruddin boarded a flight to Singapore and went on the run before
Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) could request a
travel ban. He was finally arrested in the Columbian resort town of
Cartagena on August 8th and flown home.
Mr
Nazaruddin’s spectacular fall from grace has spotlighted the fact that,
despite being 13 years removed from the fall of Indonesian dictator
Suharto’s corrupt regime in 1998, opportunistic government officials,
lawmakers and businessmen continue to collude on the awarding of state
contracts, budget funds, big business deals, and even tax breaks in
exchange for a piece of the action. This is an embarrassment for the
world’s third-largest democracy and a leading emerging economy.
While
Mr Nazaruddin’s arrest is another black eye for parliament, the scandal
has also spread far and wide. Mr Nazaruddin was treasurer of President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s ruling Democratic Party, and before he was
finally detained by Columbian immigration, he claimed from abroad that
other senior Democratic Party figures were aware of the graft involving
the dormitory project and had themselves profited by it. The Democrats
have flatly denied his claims.
Mr
Yudhoyono handily won presidential elections in 2004 and 2009 on a
platform of zero tolerance for corruption, but Mr Nazaruddin has clearly
hurt the Democratic Party’s image and poll ratings. While he can’t seek
another term in office, the president will remain its chief patron
after he steps down in 2014. Whether Mr Yudhoyono’s successor is another
Democratic Party leader remains to be seen, given that Mr Nazaruddin
implicated two potential presidential candidates in the scandal. Then
there’s the future of the party itself, which was founded by Mr
Yudhoyono ahead of the 2004 elections. Without his star power on the
stump as a candidate, some believe the Democrats will crumble in
parliamentary and presidential polls in 2014.
For
the most part, the Democratic Party’s political rivals stood back and
watched it squirm. But after Mr Nazaruddin was brought home and placed
in detention, a group of lawmakers from rival and opposition parties
curiously visited him in jail, after which Mr Nazaruddin claimed he had
“forgotten everything” about the dormitory scandal.
It
is just possible that Mr Nazaruddin will strike a deal with the KPK and
tell all about the massive web of corruption that remains a fixture in
parliament. In recent months, for example, 28 current and former
lawmakers were sentenced to prison for accepting bribes to vote for a
candidate for deputy central bank governor in 2003, before the
Democratic Party was even in parliament. If Mr Yudhoyono’s rivals want
to play hardball with him over the Nazaruddin scandal, they should pause
to consider that they have far more skeletons in their own closets.
source : economist.com
