Nothing sacred in Indonesian
graft By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - A new corruption scandal
has shown that Indonesia's crooked politicians and
government officials have no sacred cows - or
books.
A member of the House of
Representatives and his son stand accused of
corruption in connection with the government's 55
billion rupiah (US$5.9 million) program to print
copies of the Koran, Islam's holy book. But for
the nation with the world's largest Muslim
population, the scandal could prove a blessing in
disguise.
The Corruption Eradication
Commission (KPK) has accused House of
Representatives budget committee member Zulkarnaen
Djabar of receiving 4
billion rupiah in bribes on Religious Affairs
Ministry projects, including Koran printing and
supplying computer equipment for Islamic schools.
Media reports say each copy of the Koran wound up
costing the government 1 million rupiah , or more
than US$100.
Djabar, a member of the
powerful Golkar Party, allegedly steered contracts
toward his son's company. Other contract winners
reportedly had links to powerful politicians and
groups, including the deposed treasurer of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic
Party Muhammad Nazaruddin who is already facing a
raft of corruption allegations.
Clean
government groups, meanwhile, caution that
embezzled funds from the government's Koran
program may have ended up in political party
coffers.
Other members of the committee
overseeing the Religious Affairs Ministry budget
each received more than 500 copies of the
government produced Koran. The lawmakers denied
that accepting the Korans constituted bribery.
Instead they said they took the holy books for
distribution to constituents as part of their
public service.
Double
dip Despite the KPK's investigation,
alleged misappropriation of funds and scant
details on the program's true costs, the budget
committee dutifully doubled the Religious Affairs
Ministry's Koran procurement budget to 110 billion
rupiah.
Democratic Party budget committee
member Muhammad Bogowi told the Jakarta Post
newspaper, "We … agreed to the proposal because we
felt that morality in society had deteriorated
rapidly."
A two-fold budget increase to
improve morality via an apparently corrupt program
could make sense only to Indonesia's venal public
servants. The budget for Koran printing and
distribution in 2010, before the alleged fraud
began, was 4 billion rupiah.
Amid public
outrage, Djabar has denied the charges. He said
the accusations were a warning from God that he is
too involved with earthly matters and needs to
become more spiritual. That goes double for the
Ministry of Religious Affairs, long cited as a
nexus of official graft.
Last year KPK
named Religious Affairs as Indonesia's most
corrupt government agency. That's no mean feat
given the tax department's lengthy roster of
officials convicted of wrongdoing. Former
Religious Affairs Minister Said Agril al-Munawar
had already been imprisoned on embezzlement
charges.
Pilgrims' profits The
Religious Affairs Ministry's corruption problem is
linked to one of the pillars of Islam, the hajj,
the ritual pilgrimage to Mecca. The hajj is a
commandment for each of Indonesia's nearly 200
million Muslims who have sufficient health and
means for the trip.
The ministry
administers the pilgrimage, this year collecting
35 million rupiah from each aspiring hajji. At
present, the ministry holds more than 40 trillion
rupiah from 1.4 million Indonesians. Saudi Arabia
grants Indonesia an annual quota of 211,000
pilgrims, so the current waiting time for
Indonesians to visit Mecca is six years.
Meanwhile the ministry, not the
depositors, collects interest on the hajj funds,
amounting to an estimated 1.7 trillion rupiah a
year, or more than $180 million at the current
exchange rate. Investigators say the ministry
routinely uses funds to pay for government
officials to make the hajj, with plenty left for
other abuses.
But misusing other people's
money isn't the worst of the Religious Affairs
Ministry's sins, say critics. Rather than
protecting the freedom of worship and belief
inscribed in Indonesia's constitution, the
ministry has often become an advocate and enabler
of intolerance.
Aid and
discomfort In 2008, the ministry designated
Muslim splinter group Ahmadiya as a heretic sect.
That decree, issued at behest of Islamist
hardliners, has given political cover to extremist
violence against Ahmadiyah followers.
The
worst attack, in January last year in Cikeusik,
West Java, saw a mob of 1,000 fanatics bludgeon
three Ahmadis to death. Courts convicted several
assailants of minor offenses as well as sentencing
one of the 20 Ahmadis attacked to six months in
jail for his unarmed defense against the
attackers.
Days after the Ahmadi killings,
a mob burned two churches and attacked a third in
Temanngung, Central Java. A court had just
convicted a Christian man to five years in prison
for distributing pamphlets that prosecutors
claimed insulted Islam. However, the crowd thought
the sentence - a year longer than Tommy Suharto
served for masterminding the murder of the judge
who sentenced him to jail - was too lenient.
For years, Christian congregations in
Bekasi and Bogor in West Java have been subjected
to a combination of hard-line Muslim protests and
government discrimination. Both groups have been
barred by local authorities from building churches
despite court orders to permit construction.
Muslim extremists have hounded worshippers
when they've tried to hold services on the
putative church sites or alternative locations.
Congregants have even taken Sunday prayers to
Istana Merdeka, the Presidential Palace, to bring
attention to their plight. So where's the
Religious Affairs minister in all this sectarian
strife? Habitually on the side of the extremists
and against the constitution.
Loathe
thy neighbor After a Shi'ite village on
Madura Island off East Java came under attack from
a majority Sunni mob in December, mainstream
religious leaders scrupulously avoided
inflammatory language. But Religious Affairs
Minister Suryadharma Ali labeled Shi'ites as
heretics amid the volatile violence.
When
vigilantes firebombed an Ahmadiyah mosque in West
Java in April, Suryadharma failed to condemn the
attack. Instead, he warned Ahmadis "must abandon
their deviant beliefs" and obey the law.
Suryadharma, also chairman of the
Muslim-based United Development Party, one of the
Suharto-era's three sanctioned political parties,
has also suggested banning skirts above the knee,
an idea that fits with sharia law style local
regulations on dress sprouting around the country.
Last month he applauded the cancellation of Lady
Gaga's sold out concert in Jakarta after hard-line
Muslim groups threatened violence against the
singer and the audience.
The Religious
Affairs Ministry's Koran scandal will ideally end
its run as the Islamist Protection Agency, and get
it back to its real mission of protecting freedom
of worship. Or it may lead the outraged public to
ask why the world's third-largest democracy needs
to have the government actively involved in
religion at all.
Gary LaMoshi is
long-time editor of award-winning investor rights
advocate eRaider.com, has written for Slate and
Salon.com, and works an adviser to Writing Camp
(www.writingcamp.net).
He first visited Indonesia in 1994 and has been
watching ever since.
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