Is It True That The Corruption Eradication Agenda Remains Strong Despite The Revision Of The Corruption Eradication Commission Law?

JAKARTA - Politika Research and Consulting released the results of their survey regarding public perceptions of the performance of the Joko Widodo-Ma'ruf Amin administration.

This survey was taken using a multi-stage random sampling method and followed by 2,197 respondents from 34 provinces who were over 17 years old or those who were married with a margin of error of 2.13 percent.

From the results of the survey, the main researcher for Politika Research and Consulting, Ian Suherlan said, as many as 57.9 percent of respondents were satisfied with the government's performance within 100 days. Meanwhile, 27.7 percent were less satisfied and only 5.3 percent were dissatisfied.

One of the issues in the survey was that respondents felt confident about the agenda for eradicating corruption even though there was Law Number 19 of 2019 concerning the Revision of the KPK Law.

Although 63.8 percent of respondents admitted that they had not followed the progress of the revision of the KPK Law, the survey results stated that 53.4 percent of respondents believed that the anti-corruption agenda was not disturbed by this revision.

According to Ian, only 24.5 percent followed the issue of the revision of the KPK Law which was recently considered to be debilitating. However, these respondents believed that the revision would not have much effect on eradicating corruption. Moreover, so far, the KPK is not the only institution that handles corruption cases.

"So even though we asked whether or not we asked about the revision of the KPK Law and those who knew were 24.5 percent, the second question about corruption eradication was not specific to the KPK because it was not only the KPK that eradicated corruption but also the prosecutor's office and the police," said Ian in a discussion at Cikini area, Central Jakarta, Sunday, 23 February.

In fact, there are still many who question the work of the KPK with this law. One of them is because their fugitive Harun Masiku has never been caught, who is a suspect in giving bribes to the former Commissioner of the General Elections Commission (KPU) Wahyu Setiawan.

In addition, suspicions about the KPK's performance also arose after the investigation of the 36 cases they were currently investigating was terminated. The cases that were terminated were related to corruption in BUMN, ministries and members of the Indonesian Parliament.

"The KPK has confirmed that it has stopped 36 cases at the investigation stage. We will further describe this in accordance with the principles of legal certainty, openness and accountability to the public as regulated in Article 5 of the KPK Law, ”said Acting KPK spokesman for prosecution Ali Fikri, Friday, February 21.

Ali denied that the termination of this investigation had only occurred in the era of the leadership of Firli Bahuri cs. This is because during Agus Rahardjo's leadership in the 2014-2019 period, 162 cases were stopped at the investigation level.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) questioned the decision to terminate the investigation of dozens of these cases. ICW researcher Wana Alamsyah assessed that there are several mechanisms that must be carried out by this anti-graft agency. One of them, is the title of the case.

"If the 36 cases are stopped by the KPK, have they gone through the case title mechanism?" Wana said to VOI some time ago, adding that each process of terminating this should involve every element, from the investigation team, the investigation team, to the public prosecutor team.

So that in reflection of the termination of this case, Wana assessed that the work of prosecution in the era of the leadership of Firli Bahuri cs would decrease drastically compared to the previous year. Moreover, Firli only worked on legacy cases from the Agus Rahardjo era, such as the bribery of the Sidoarjo Regent and the bribery of the former KPU Commissioner, Wahyu Setiawan.

"With the large number of cases terminated by the KPK during the investigation process, this strengthens the public's suspicion that the KPK's prosecution performance will drop sharply compared to the previous year," he concluded.