A Year Jokowi, ICW: Government Only Focuses On Investment, Ignores Law Enforcement

Indonesian President Joko Widodo-Ma'ruf Amin (Photo: Setkab)

JAKARTA - The Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) assesses that a year President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Vice President Ma'ruf Amin took office, they did not side with corruption eradication and other law enforcement.

"The policies taken by the president over the past year have only focused on investment and ignored law enforcement," said ICW researcher Kurnia Ramadhana as quoted from his written statement, Friday, October 23.

According to him, one of the important indicators to assess the commitment to eradicate corruption that President Jokowi and his staff have is by looking at the performance of the law enforcement structure. Because, based on Article 8 of the Police Law and Article 19 paragraph (2) of the Law on the Prosecutor's Office, the President is the structural superior for the National Police Chief and the Attorney General. Likewise with the KPK.

According to Kurnia, since the enactment of Law 19 of 2019 which contains the revision of the KPK Law, it is stated that this anti-graft agency has been co-opted into the executive clump. Thus, the assessment of executive commitment becomes relevant when measuring the alignment of law enforcement, especially the eradication of corruption.

However, after a year of Jokowi-Ma'ruf Amin's leadership, he saw a setback in law enforcement in efforts to eradicate corruption and this had an impact on decreasing public trust. "For example, at the KPK. Since 2019 the public has voiced rejection of problematic leadership candidates. However, President Joko Widodo still insists on choosing five leaders for the 2019-2023 period, one of them Firli Bahuri. Finally, the public's predictions have been proven. ethical sanctions for using luxury international modes of transportation, "he said.

Furthermore, due to the enactment of the revision of the KPK Law, ICW and Transparency International Indonesia (TII) also noted three problems that occurred within the anti-graft agency such as internal institutional management, prosecution, and problems.

"All these problems cannot be separated from the leadership figures chosen by President Jokowi and the DPR in the last period," he said.

In addition, Kurnia also assessed that the former Governor of DKI Jakarta should be responsible because currently the KPK is no longer an institution that has full trust from the public due to a number of problems in it.

Not only the KPK, this anti-corruption activist also revealed the performance of other legal institutions such as the Attorney General's Office and the National Police, which are not much different in their performance. According to Kurnia, the poor performance of the AGO and the National Police was seen when they handled the case that caught the inmate who had become a fugitive, namely Joko Tjandra.

This case, which shocked the public, turned out to reveal the existence of allegations of conspiracy within the body of law enforcement from both the police and the Attorney General's Office. Because, until now it has been proven that there are two active police generals and a prosecutor who are suspected of having committed a criminal conspiracy in order to free and assist prisoners in a Bank Bali collection right or cessie case.

Not to mention that it is still in the same series of cases, the Attorney General's Office is also under the spotlight because it is suspected of providing protection for their subordinates who are defendants, namely Prosecutor Pinangki Sirna Malasari.

"It started when the AGO issued the Guidelines for the Examination of Prosecutors, continued with the provision of legal assistance, ignoring the supervision of the Prosecutor's Commission, until there was no coordination with the KPK before sending the case to court," he said.

By looking at the facts, President Jokowi should not hesitate to remove Attorney General ST Burhanuddin. However, Kurnia assessed that Jokowi was again unfazed even though there were a number of irregularities that occurred.

Furthermore, Kurnia also criticized the issue of budget allocation amounting to Rp381.6 billion to three law enforcement institutions such as the KPK, Polri, and the Attorney General's Office. Although this large budget has been disbursed for investigations, in fact, during the first semester of 2020, law enforcement institutions were only able to handle 169 cases out of a target of 2,225 cases.

So seeing the existing conditions, Kurnia said, concluding that the performance of law enforcement officers during the year Jokowi-Ma'ruf leadership was so bad. "Seeing a situation like this, in the future the portrait of law enforcement, especially the eradication of corruption will be even grimmer," he concluded.