ICW: President Jokowi Often Spreads Sweet Promises To Eradicate Corruption

JAKARTA - Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) said President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) often made sweet promises to strengthen the eradication of corruption. This is evidenced by the number of statements that are not by current conditions.

This was conveyed by ICW researcher, Kurnia Ramadhana, in response to President Joko Widodo's (Jokowi) speech at the commemoration of World Anti-Corruption Day (Hakordia) 2021 on Thursday, December 9 yesterday.

"People can judge that the President often only makes sweet promises to eradicate corruption", Kurnia said in her statement to reporters, Friday, December 10.

One of Jokowi's statements that got Kurnia's attention was regarding the Bill on Asset Confiscation to be promulgated immediately. According to him, what was conveyed by the former Governor of DKI Jakarta was not by the existing reality because this draft law was not included in the 2022 Priority National Legislation Program.

Based on this condition, Kurnia then assessed that Jokowi should be the first to realize why the eradication of corruption is still not optimal. He should have cleaned up first before asking law enforcement officials to do the same.

"The first party who must be aware and improve because the eradication of corruption has not improved is President Joko Widodo himself. Because the problem with law enforcement today is the absence of a clear attitude from the president", he said.

"For example, the President in his Hakordia speech yesterday pushed for the Bill on Asset Confiscation to be enacted next year. For ICW, that statement does not match today's reality", added Kurnia.

In addition, ICW also regrets that Jokowi did not directly reprimand the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) because of the noise made by Firli Bahuri et al. Kurnia said that the reprimand should have been created because a lot of rowdy things have happened at the anti-corruption commission recently and one of them is the National Insight Test Assessment (TWK).

It is known, as a result of the TWK assessment, dozens of KPK employees had to be eliminated because they failed to become state civil servants, including Novel Baswedan.

"ICW also regrets that the President did not mention the noise that is always created by the KPK leadership", said the anti-corruption activist.

According to him, this noise is the reason why the KPK's performance is now disrupted. "As the Head of State, the President must reprimand the KPK leadership", said Kurnia.

"Because, due to the endless noise, the KPK's working wheels are disrupted and its achievements are far from ideal, especially in the scope of action", he concluded.