Corruption Rises, KPK Asks Selective Political Parties To Choose Candidates For Public Officials

Deputy Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Fitroh Rohcahyanto. (Tsa Tsia/VOI)

JAKARTA - Deputy Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Fitroh Rochicahyanto, asked political parties (parpol) to strengthen the selection and recruitment of cadres who will be promoted as candidates for public officials, both at the legislative and executive levels.

"Recruitment to elect legislative candidates, as well as executive candidates, really has to go through a selection process. There are assessments like the selection of officials in the institution," Fitroh said as quoted from the KPK YouTube channel, Friday, May 16.

Fitroh emphasized the importance of integrity in the cadre selection process. According to him, without integrity, it is difficult to build anti-corruption awareness even though the candidate has capacity and intelligence.

"By filtering out candidates who have integrity, then talking about capacity. Because when it comes to intelligence capacity, brain intelligence, without integrity, it is very difficult to build anti-corruption awareness," he said.

He also reminded that public officials have a great opportunity to abuse power, including corrupt practices.

"Moreover, being an official has a great opportunity to steal people's money. To steal using money that is not his right, if you don't have strong integrity, in my opinion it is very difficult," added Fitroh.

Therefore, Fitroh appealed to political parties to have clear parameters and standards in assessing the integrity of cadre candidates, especially in the recruitment process for legislative candidates and regional heads, even for presidential elections (pilpres).

"So far, both legislative candidates, DPRD II and DPRD I and the central DPRD do not have any selection process. This is important so that those who advance to participate in this political constellation have indeed met the established standards," concluded Fitroh.

Fitroh as the deputy chairman of the KPK assessed that strengthening the selection and recruitment of prospective public officials within political parties was one of the strategic steps in efforts to prevent corruption from an early age.