Responding To The Commission's Refusal To Follow The Ombudsman's Report, Novel Baswedan: I'm Shame!

Baswedan's novel/screenshot during an online press conference

JAKARTA - The inactive KPK investigator Novel Baswedan admitted he was embarrassed when he heard a press conference conducted by his institution to respond to the findings of the Indonesian Ombudsman regarding the maladministration of the implementation of the National Insight Test Assessment (TWK).

According to him, the findings along with the corrective actions submitted by the Indonesian Ombudsman some time ago could be understood by the anti-corruption commission as a correction. However, what happened was different because the KPK seemed to have avoided its obligations.

"What the Ombudsman said should be understood as a problem that was discovered and must be corrected. But what happened was far from that", Novel said in an online press conference, Friday, August 5.

The statement made by the Deputy Chairperson of the KPK, Nurul Ghufron, in a press conference on Thursday, August 5, was also said to impress that the leaders did not care about serious problems in the implementation of the TWK. This made Novel consider the KPK's statement to be embarrassing and he felt concerned.

"I myself feel concerned about the problem that was conveyed by the KPK leadership yesterday. Mr. Ghufron who conveyed it actually avoided the problem, didn't want to know that there was a serious problem. Of course, this is very embarrassing and I myself heard it was embarrassed", he said,

Novel said the results of the Ombudsman's report clearly stated that there were several problems in the implementation of the TWK, including issues of integrity and manipulation. However, these findings do not seem to bother the KPK leaders and they actually defend themselves and this indicates a serious matter.

He then reminded that the KPK does not belong to the KPK leadership but belongs to the people who are expected to eradicate corruption. Thus, Novel asked Firli Bahuri and colleagues not to take the issue of integrity and credibility lightly.

"I hope that the findings from the Ombudsman can be a good review, which then we can see that efforts to eliminate, weaken efforts in this way must be seen as a serious matter", he said.

"In fact, I see that the KPK leadership is involved. So, in the future, we have to see (the Ombudsman's findings, ed) as a problem because efforts to make the KPK abandon employees who work well, we can see it is not a trivial thing", added Novel.

As previously reported, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has expressed objections and will not carry out any corrective actions submitted by the Indonesian Ombudsman after maladministration and abuse of authority were found in the TWK implementation process.

There are 13 points of objection from the KPK which resulted in the refusal to carry out corrective actions according to the report of the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia.

Among these points, the KPK considers the Ombudsman to have violated its legal obligation to refuse reports or stop the examination of reports that are known to be under court examination.

The KPK also considers the legal standing of the reporter, that is, employees who are declared not to have passed the TWK are not the people who receive KPK services as parties who have the right to report to the Ombudsman.

Not only that, the anti-corruption commission said that the corrective actions from the results of the Indonesian Ombudsman's report had no causal relationship and conflicted between the conclusions and the final report.