The Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) collaborated with Rectors of several universities in South Sulawesi to campaign for the declaration of anti-corruption movement, Sunday (10/21), at Losari Beach, Makassar, South Sulawesi. It was attended by the UGM Rector, Prof. Ir. Panut Mulyono, M.Eng., D.Eng., and Director of UGM Centre for Anti-Corruption Studies (PUKAT), Dr. Zainal Arifin Mochtar.
The campaign was carried out in the framework of Anti-Corruption Summits III which took place at Universitas Hasanuddin Makassar.
KPK Deputy Chairman, Laode Muhammad Syarif, appreciated the efforts made by UGM for organizing the Anti-Corruption Summits after being held twice at UGM. “UGM already has the PUKAT. Now it’s time for Universitas Hasanuddin to be known as a campus that fights corruption,” he said.
He opined that all campus should unite to support the anti-corruption movement campaign because it would be difficult to promote corruption prevention efforts without their support. Aside from prosecution, corruption eradication is also possible to be done through anti-corruption campaigns. He mentioned around 300 KPK members were responsible for prosecution and 1,500 for preventive action.
However, he added, many local leaders were still involved in corruption when it was their duty to run a clean and transparent government. “To date, there are 99 governors and regents investigated by the KPK or 30 percent of local leaders are damaging the country.”
South Sulawesi Governor, Aminuddin Abdullah, said the extent of development progress in the region can be used to determine whether there are acts of corruption among local leaders. “If the region is not well-maintained, roads are damaged, and nothing has changed, it means that the fund is lost to corruption.”
Zainal Arifin said it was the first time the Anti-Corruption Summit was held outside UGM. In his opinion, the summit could generate many joint commitments between anti-corruption activists and academics on corruption eradication in Indonesia.
The abundant cases of political corruption handled by KPK, according to Zainal, indicated the lack of a strong and transparent budget management system in regional governance systems.
He added that the corrupt behavior of local leaders is linked to the process of electoral contestation which is considered expensive. “There is a correlation between high-cost elections and corrupt behavior of local leaders where the money is used to fund the candidates for election,” he said.
Moreover, added the lecturer of UGM Faculty of Law, the pragmatism of political parties that only nominate candidates based on money and popularity encourages corruption to occur when running the government. “There are many problems that must be addressed one by one,” he concluded.