An Underlooked Aspect of Corruption

the-read article on Politics

Prologue: Keep Your Purse on The Watch! They’re Everywhere!!! 👀

1. Setya Novanto 💳
2. Anas Urbaningrum 🏗
3. Suryadharma Ali 🙏🏿
4. Luthfi Hasan Ishaq 🐄
5. ….
6. ….

5258. Fulan bin Fulan

For Indonesian, these 4 top names should resound one thing (no, two things), which [1] They’re all politicians; [2] They’re convicted public corruptors. What’s now for the 5258 others on counting game? Yup, it's the number of other convicted public corruptors that’s the special anti-corruption task force of Indonesia KPK (Komisi Anti Korupsi — Anti Corruption Commission), has caught since the birth of the task force, which is Dec 23rd 2003.

Setya ‘The Saint’ Novanto for example, the true legislative hustler, former Indonesia’s Head of Representative (Ketua DPR), a man running a consecutive of 6 office years of DPR (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat —House Representative of Indonesia) was charged with Approx USD 7.3 Million (Rp.13 Billion) worth of fines and 15 years in jail, the reason? Well, for an e-KTP (electric national-ID register) project worth USD 409 Million (Rp 5.9 Trillion) 49% of its value is a markup, which was an unnecessary addition to the budget, or in short, steals away USD 200 Million from the Republic (of Indonesia).

Similar stories different actors, with a slight of plot twists. That’s to cap up all of the other public corruptors' actions, from “Gantung Anas di Monas! —Hung Anas (a politician) on top of Monas!” swearing facade to fancy prison cells, these people are labeled as traitors, thieves, and maybe one of the most hated lads in this so-called ‘anti corrupt’ society of Indonesia.

Okay, that’s prologue for you, hence, we’re not here to gossip and roundabout the crooked politicians behind bars all day, we’re here to discuss what’s stated on the article title, so buckle up for the real discussions.

Part I: How Much Money is Enough for You?

Now this is one of the trivial questions that I like, think about it for 10 seconds or less (or more), you sure have your own life goals and others, and with that being said, if you get to decide whatever amount of money per month you can get, [1] how much money is enough for you?

For me, the number is around USD 70,000/annum (Rp 84,5 million per month). That’s the average of ivy league graduates' salary after work in 10 years. Now to swine this topic with the main topic, I will give you another trivial question: [2] How much the Representatives (Anggota DPR) made each year?

If you don’t know what the ivy league is, it's the Harvard, Yale, Wharton, Princeton, Cornell, Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia Universities; It’s one of the oldest, best, and elite universities in the US/World.

Thus, the answer to the second trivial question is roughly Rp 66.1 million per month (for a common member of Representatives) to a whopping Rp 80.3 million per month (Head of Representatives — Ketua DPR), which is close to those smart, smart, smart, smart, smart ivy league graduates made per month, AFTER 10 YEARS WORK.

Now to think that these people (I’m talking about you Setya Novanto!) have already had enormous salaries, and still corrupt the hell of the public money, is unfathomable. Me myself really want to talk to one of them, asking the first trivial question to each one of them like “How much money is enough for you? Can’t you just be happy getting money on par to smart people by the USA standard?”, but even so, I believe that their answer wouldn’t be all about that greediness too… I believe that there were something others, because there are more motives to corruptions rather than a simple pile of money, and here’s were going to talk about one of them, only one of them, but it is the underlooked one (i suppose), which is:

trust.

Part II: An Underlooked Aspect

To pertain trust is to cooperate accordingly.

That quote 👆🏿 is a made-up quote made by myself, it may be wrong but it is also possible to be right. Given the many explanations about trust in Merriam-Webster, I myself conclude that sometimes, trust can be in a form that the quote pointed out; cooperation between parties.

So the first keyword for this discussion is; trust.

We trust our banks 🏛 to cooperate with us so that they can safeguard our money(or rather we lend them money), we trust our partners 🙋🏽‍♀️ even if the ties between us and our partners sometimes are absurd or not so formal (friendship, girlfriend/boyfriend), we kept our cooperation with the parties that we can trusts, whether the stakes are low or high.

That's it, we’re now being introduced to the second keyword of this underlooked aspect, stake.

Part III: Trust in Politics, Stakes in Life

With great powers comes great responsibility

- Uncle Ben from Spiderman

In this world of us, many would find it true that great matters/powers inherited great responsibility(like that Uncle Ben). While I myself (may) object to this view (sorry uncle Ben), I do believe that some things come up with great powers/matters, it’s not necessarily in a form of responsibility, but its in a form of stake.

Thus, politics, like any other great matters; economics, national defenses, foods, possessed the attribute of great stakes. On average, caleg (legislative candidates) may spend up to Rp 5 Billion (USD 357K) just for the campaign costs, and it's not even counted as the stakes, it's just the cost; economic costs. The stakes lies far more deeper and complicated;

First, you need to understand that they sacked their business or family fortunes for that Rp 5 Bill, so that’s one stake for you; [1] the continuation of your own family/business, with -5 Bill Rupiah.

Second, they need to prepare themselves for the currency of politics, which is the trust of the people. And what is a politician to their base voters? Right, a genie, they grants wishes. So the second stake would be; [2] their voters wishes.

Really, is that wishes really matters? Well, on a personal level, you may not be that wishy with your representatives, you may even never set a hearing or care about what their doing after choosing them from ballout several years before, but there are LSMs (NGOs) and ‘partners’ that looked up to these politicians and talked with them; their Parties; and as I said before, the currency of politics is trust, so to betray that wishes is like causing an inflation to your own currency.

Now to better depicts these two stakes; (obviously there are countless of other on stake/stakeholders for this business of politics, but we’ll just bear with these two at this time…)

Exhibit A: You are running for legislative, and you need the support of the cleric/businessman/random figure with a huge mass in your representative area. They may be your partner and promote you right away because they trusted you, now you’re appointed, will you break their trust and lost your chance to be re-elected had they request you to do something murky? Let say they need your ‘help’ to open a conservation area to become a religious boarding school/palm oil field…

Exhibit B: You’re making it on your own foot, settled on the big house of parliament, but you’re (unwillingly, at least in your thought) supports the new law draft that your party is desperately pushing over and over again, lets say its about the COVID19 Relief Package, which you knew that’s been marked up 30%. You may think that you got balls and object, because surely if your party doesn’t want you to run in the next year, you can find another party, but with such attitude you may create your image of ‘an uncontrollable piece’, so which party will likely take you in?

Do you see where this is all going? Yep, politicians taking these and many many other things into their considerations when they’re gobbling up APBN (State Budget), doing corruptions, or whatever extra sauce businesses.

It's not always about (or only about) the money, people conduct murky business with politicians because they trust them, such the politicians betrayed their business, there may be no more politics for them, etc, etc, the stakes; maybe its high, maybe its low, maybe its risky, maybe its already settled before they even officially elected, so maybe, just maybe, in their perspective; stakes in doing corruptions are their own careers line/lives, thus, doing corruptions is somewhat inevitable.

So the very logic to that ‘inevitable corruptions’ is that whether they want to go to jail without the corrupted money, or maybe they can just opt for 5 years in jail but with money, jeez, how troublesome is that?

Part IV: Outro

The whole ordeal when it comes to corruptions news is the money, TVs and other media seems to only attracted about that. Like for example, when there’s a news about homicide, the suspect motives oftentimes included in the news material, but that’s not the always the case for corruptions news, and it’s also easy to comprehend why; it’s collective, it has fewer physical traces than homicide, it strikes slowly and you cannot really feel the ‘bad’ impact like say one death. Think Artur Doyle would even troubled if Sherlock Holmes was a corruption detective…

Nevertheless, its still a crime and one that needs to be stopped, and we already have Holmes in this departement, the KPK (Anti-Corruption Comission — Komisi Anti Korupsi), but the issue regarding trust and politics that may become one of the very reason of corruption could be solved by this KPK’s curative act.

Of course, doing ‘beware of your acquintances’ seminars to a bunch of politicians may not be the best way, but its mindlessly worth to try. Setting up a ‘cleaner’ report on politicians acquintances like ‘who knew who’, ‘who befriends who’, ‘who supports who on political campaign’ may also help, as there are strands now to watch, the point is; there must be some ways to control this, lawmakers and anti-corruption combatants surely knew much much more about this than me, and with you reading this article, it may also helps, as there are some other factors thats being underlooked about corruption, and by understanding it a little more, we may brought our path a little bit closer to eradicate corruptions.

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