Combating corruption with integrity, leadership

Former deputy of the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Erry Riyana Hardjapamengkas underlined that leadership and integrity are the most crucial elements required to successfully combat corruption.

Erry highlighted that future leaders must value personal integrity as the most important assets in oneself. “Despite there are some conducts that are acceptable in the face of law, ethics is much higher than law. And some acceptable conducts in the face of law do not necessarily right in an ethical perspective. So, ethical leadership is crucial,” Erry said. Speaking at Thursday’s discussion on the fight against corruption by using integrity and leadership, Erry explained that leaders in an organization who don’t lead with ethical discipline put their companies, their employees, and their shareholders at risk.

Erry cited the theory of fraud triangle of a well-known criminologist Donald R Cressey who named the three reasons why people commit fraud: opportunity, motivation and rationalization. Corrupt people usually make justification of their violations through taking various reasoning  that include pressure from the working-place and the situation that the corrupt practices are being commonly performed in the office.

The people who wish to avoid corruption also often face ethical dilemma. “The golden rule begins within ourselves: the morale courage and the firmness to decide are important for an individual to tackle the ethical dilemma.” He also pointed out that a leader need to establish control system, role-modeling approach from the upper management to bottom,  as well as the having vision in preparing future leaders once he/she resigns.

Erry acknowledged that corruption eradication required sustainable efforts performed in a long stretch of time. 

“Corruption eradication need at least 30 years to be successfully implemented. The key is sustainability, while leadership of the state leaders also crucially determinant,” said Erry. He cited that Malaysia requires 30 years, while Singapore needs some 40 years to implement clean governance after previously have been known as a city filled with criminals. Similar situation can be found in Hongkong, which used to be known as a mafia city.  

Observing the efforts that have been performed continuously by KPK since about nine years ago, Erry believed that Indonesia would still require at least 20 more years to finally be clean of corruption. As of today, KPK has nabbed four former ministers, one active minister, up to around 100 members of House of Representatives, four ambassadors, four consulate general officials, six commissioners of the General Election Committee (KPU), 17 mayors and regents, as well as a number of district attorneys, lawyers, and private companies’ CEO.

“With the rapid development of information and communication technology  and the internet, supported by an improved awareness and monitoring of the society and media, hopefully we can accelerate the process,” said Erry.

Actress cum film director Ine Febriyanti, who also speak at the Thursday’s seminar on Combating Corruption with Leadership and Integrity, acknowledged that she was previously indifferent toward the heavily corrupted politics in Indonesia.

As she started to engage in a 2011 collaboration with KPK and Transparency International to create a series of four short films carrying the theme ‘Kita versus Korupsi’, Ine said that she has gained a new insight toward politics. “Being apathetic toward politics is wrong. I come to awareness that I have to do and contribute more in the fight against corruption.”

One of the four series of short movies titled Good afternoon Risa! was screened during the seminar. The film, which has been screened in Amsterdam, Berlin, Den Haag, Paris, Busan and at KPK’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign nationwide, featured the difficulty of maintaining self-integrity when living in a corrupt society.

“Integrity is such a rare trait to find, but there are still Indonesians who posses it. We need to work harder to fix the system in our government and society, so that such trait can still be preserved,”  said Ine.

Changing the world from Garut

Some people may doubt that profitable business can go along with the mission of tackling social problems. But Garut-origin Goris Mustaqim has proved otherwise.  

“In the practice of social entrepreneurship  we are making the efforts of overcoming social problems, while at the same time running a business. It is more than just a charity movement, it is a business entity. I believe it’s suitable for Indonesia, where poverty is not just a problem of economy, but also a cultural matter,” said Goris.

The 30-year-old civil engineer from Bandung Institute of Technology, who has discovered his passion for making a positive change in the grassroots level, lives and breathes his passion through a social enterprise Asgar Muda Foundation, he founded in 2007. The word ‘asgar’ is an abbreviation of  the Indonesian word ‘asal’ means origin, while Garut refer to a small town in West Java and ‘muda’ means young.

“The enterprise’s name itself is very ‘kampung’ reflecting its very core of purpose of developing the local potential in Garut,” said Goris.

Through his Asgar Foundation, Goris focuses in the works of education empowerment, entrepreneurship and micro-loan cooperative.   “Education is such a life-changing experience, that bring me to realization that it has a tremendous impact in changing one’s life,” he said.

Through a generous sponsorship from a geothermal company, Goris has been initiating study tutor classes (bimbel) for the past three years to  reach around 1000 students of senior high schools. The ‘bimbel’ operate cross subsidy, where students with healthy economy situation pays, while those from the lower economy families receive free classes, as well as study counselling, and certain amount of scholarships.  

In the entrepreneurship section, his foundation aims at providing wider opportunity for exhibition and product innovation for various small business people that include leather craftsmen  cattle farmers, and villagers of eco-tourism. “We have also assisted the initiator of the Cokodot in various exhibitions that eventually launched the product to become a true manifestation of the term ‘local going global’,” said Goris. Cokodot, which is a snack souvenir made of a combination of chocolate and Garut’s traditional delicacy ‘dodol’, has now become a well-known brand.   So far, the Asgar Muda Foundation has assisted in establishing 12 local entrepreneurs, 138 local farmers and 886 micro-finance debtor and partners.    

At the micro-finance sectors, community empowerment is being established through a  Syariah-based cooperative by the name BMT One (Baitul Mal wat Tamwil) that financially assist vendors at traditional markets as well as farmers to obtain start-up capital for sustaining their small businesses. The cooperative provides various credit ceiling, from Rp 1 million up to Rp 40 million for those displaying improved paying-back performance.

Through the cooperative, farmers also obtain seed and fertilizer assistance, while at the same time they are taught to invest by planting various trees like tobacco, jabon, sengon, alba, etc, that can be harvested in the future. “Currently, there are around 15 hectares. When harvest time arrive, these farmers would receive the largest portion of the revenue, up to 70 percent. In the way, farmers will be able to pay their children’s education and even go for hajj pilgrimage.

“Basically, we are trying to teach them the value of delaying instant pleasure for future betterment,” he said. 

Speaking to hundreds of candidate recipients of LPDP scholarship on Wednesday, Goris urged more educated Indonesians to take part in empowering those who come from economically disadvantaged background.

“Among others, poverty is caused by unequal opportunities. More people are needed to involve in community empowerment activities,” underlined Goris, as he cited a wise-words of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ 

LPDP promises better govt-funded scholarship

Educational Fund Management institution (LPDP) pledged to provide an improved quality of governmental scholarships for Indonesian citizens aiming to take graduate and postgraduate studies at home and abroad.

“Previously, there have been cases of late scholarship funding disbursement by some of the government-based scholarship programs. We, LPDP, intend to prevent such occurrence in our program through our commitment in providing on-time scholarship fund,” business development and funding planning director of LPDP at the Ministry of Finance M. Mahdum told future recipients of the LPDP scholarship during the opening day of the LPDP leadership programs on Wednesday in Jakarta. 

As many as 139 future recipients of LPDP scholarships gathered for 11 days from June 26-July 6 to take part in the final selection stage of LPDP scholarship scheme.

Inaugural launched this year, it is a joint scholarship scheme hosted by the country’s Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and Culture and Ministry of Religious Affairs, aiming to provide full-scholarship funding for all Indonesian citizens, both from public and private sectors, seeking to take graduate and post-grad studies at home and abroad. The scholarship is the brainchild of the country's former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, set up during the term of her successor Agus Martowardojo and inaugurated at the current term of finance minister Chatib Basri.

Mahdum said that continuity and punctuality of the scholarship were expected with LPDP’s organizational format of Public Service Agency (BLU-Badan Layanan Umum) that is fully authorized to manage its own Rp 15 trillion-worth of endowment fund allocated from the 20 percent education fund of the annual national budgets since 2010. 

The scholarship scheme was initiated due to awareness of the low quality and quantity of educated human resources that Indonesia currently still faced, despite McKinsey Global Institute’s estimation that Indonesia would become the seventh largest economy in the world by 2030 from the 16th largest as of today.  

According to 2011 data of the higher education directorate general at the Ministry of Education and Culture, the ratio of postgraduate degree holders in Indonesia are still very low compared to in other countries, like Malaysia, Iran and Japan. In Indonesia, only 98 people of 1 million population are indicated as postgraduate degree holder, while in Malaysia there are 509 per million, Iran 1,410 per million of population and Japan 6,438 per million of population.   As of today, Indonesia is home for only 55 million skilled workers, while in 2030, the country will requires around 113 million of skilled workers.  

“Many of our Indonesian students excel very well in various international competitions, but we don’t want their works to stop in books and prototypes. We want more of them to contribute in the industrial sector, and the key solutions are human resources development and innovations,” LPDP chief director Eko Prasetyo said.

For its inaugural year of dispatching the first batch of recipients, LPDP has shortlisted a total of 658 candidates that are required to participate at several phases of leadership programs. Wednesday’s leadership program was the second phase that saw a total of 139 participants, comprising of 82 master students abroad, 16 master students at home, 34 doctorate students abroad and 6 home doctorate.