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.