For Indonesia, the eradication of systemic corruption is one of the country’s biggest challenges. A central part of Indonesia’s anticorruption strategy has been strengthening the country’s anticorruption institutions, most notably through the establishment of the Indonesian Corruption Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi/, or  ”KPK”) in 2002. The KPK has been quite successful over the past decade, yet Indonesia is still perceived as corrupt. One reason for this may be Indonesia’s own pro-corruption culture. Public officials are not ashamed to ask for bribes, and the public and investors are not reluctant to pay them. Indeed, some Indonesian public servants do not even recognize their corrupt acts as illegal or wrongful. For example, when Indonesia’s Minister of Religion Suryadharma Ali was named as a suspect for embezzling money from the Hajj fund, he testified before the KPK that he did not know that his action was corrupt. The same line of argument was advanced by Jero Wacik, another minister named as a suspect in a corruption case by the KPK. These claims may seem absurd, but a person who lived in Indonesia can easily say that a lot of Indonesian people may indeed not know that certain wrongful behavior is (illegal) corruption. For example, giving petty cash to a public official as “gratitude” for expediting the issuance of a national identification card would not be considered as corrupt behavior by many Indonesians.

That a culture of corruption is embedded in Indonesia is not surprising. After all, it was only recently, under the reign of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that the government began to take significant steps to eradicate corruption. If Indonesia’s pro-corruption culture is part of the problem, as it seems to be, more steps have to be taken beyond “mere” legal reform, institutional reform, and more aggressive law enforcement. Indonesia needs to establish a new strategy and approach in eradicating the endemic corruption, one that takes culture into consideration and implements anticorruption education programs to change this culture. What kind of anticorruption education might effectively change Indonesia’s pro-corruption culture in the long run? Here are three proposals the Indonesian government might consider: Continue reading →