YOGYAKARTA – Deputy Chairman of Anti Corruption Commission (KPK), Bibit Slamet Riyanto said that money politics in each election of regional leaders has made more corruption ‘criminals’ become officials. This has brought more difficulties in the eradication of corruption practices.
“Don’t elect a criminal as an official. But now there are many criminals becoming officials. Our political system which is ladden with money politcs has caused anti-corruption more difficult to do,”
Bibit said when briefing 234 new graduates of accounting profession in the Faculty of Economics and Business in Grha Sabha Pramana, Saturday (25/6).
According to Bibit, money politics teaches people to be pragmatic in electing leaders. While in fact the elected leaders often become corruptors because they have to repay the money they have spent during the elections. “We also found out that more officials get richer as they have received grants,” he said.
Bibit admitted that during his 3 years of becoming KPK deputy chairman, the corruption in Indonesia has become systemic and spreading to all sectors, not only bringing losses to the state but also community social economic rights. As an extraordinary crime, anti-corruption has been done extraordinarily, too. “Corruption is rampant and massive in society as there are assumptions that corruption is a normal thing, and corruption practices are even found starting from ID card, permits and diriving licence arrangement,” he said.
The extent of corruption practices is marked by the number of complaints filed by community to the KPK about corruption behaviour. “The number of complaints regarding corruption practices reachers 48,206. All of the reported cases happened in almost all social strata,” he said.
Bibit symbolizes corruption practices as the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, Bibit said that the role of accountants is more important in anti-corruption in Indonesia because an accountant can audit how much is the State’s loss due to corruption. Even an accountant can mitigate and prevent corruption.
“An accountant has to have integrity and competence. They should not be used by certain people to manipulate financial data because what often happened was mark-up and manipulation data,” he said.
Assistant to Vice Rector, Dr. Ir. Jamhari, said that the role of accountant is very important in supporting the continuity of a company and a state due to the good financial management.
“Those that need to be healthy are not only human body but also companies and state institutions. The progress of an institution’s management requires state’s and company’s healthy finance. Those that can diagnose healthy finance is an accountant,” he said.