13 hours ago
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January 14, 2025 | 04:00 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Jokowi was included in the 2024 OCCRP shortlist of the most corrupt leaders. Corruption is not simply stealing state funds.
THE Indonesian people need to learn from people in Kenya when responding to announcements by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Rather than objecting, they protested that the global organization did not place President William Ruto at the top of the list for organized crime and corruption in 2024.
As the year neared its end, the OCCRP announced the names of a number of leaders selected as finalists on its list of people involved in organized crime and corruption. Jokowi, Indonesian president from 2014 to 2024, was in third place after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and William Ruto. Three other people on the list were Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina and Indian tycoon Gautam Adani.
The inclusion of Jokowi in the shortlist of the most corrupt figures, along with the leaders of ‘third class’ nations, is bad news and embarrassing for Indonesia. This is the first time in history a former Indonesian president has been included in the list of corrupt people issued by the OCCRP, a consortium of dedicated investigative journalists that frequently exposes organized crime and corruption from around the world.
The OCCRP announcement led to opinions for and against it. A number of politicians belonging to the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which is chaired by Kaesang Pangarep, Jokowi’s youngest son, were the driving force defending the former president. They cast doubt on the credibility of the organization, spread fake news that Jokowi’s name had disappeared from the OCCRP release, and were reported to have put pressure on various media to remove reports about the OCCRP. The online article on CNN Indonesia, which was the first to report the news on Tuesday, December 31, can no longer be accessed.
The efforts of Jokowi and his supporters to defend themselves left and right were in vain, because these corrupt leaders were nominated based on a global survey. Therefore, Jokowi’s supporters demand that the OCCRP should provide legal evidence for its nomination is misleading.
We have to applaud the OCCRP that has found a new method to identify problematic individuals, at a time when law enforcement in this country is failing to do so. Moreover, this international network, comprising independent journalists from around the world, also openly announces its method to select the corrupt leaders of 2024 in a proper and transparent manner. The OCCRP announced that at least 55,000 people—of whom 7,500 nominated Jokowi—has participated in the initial selection. After receiving nominations, the final selection was made by capable judges.
In his 10 years as president, Jokowi was judged to have done considerable damage to Indonesian politics. Corruption is not simply stealing state funds. Nepotism, misuse of power and practices that erode democracy are also part of corruption. In the Indonesian context, this is what happened through electoral fraud.
In the Jokowi administration, the 2024 general elections were the worst in Indonesia since the start of the Reformasi era. He damaged the institutions organizing the election in order to benefit his son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who is now vice president. The brazen deployment of government forces and the paying out of social assistance funds to bring about the victory of his son can be categorized as organized crime and corruption.
The denials from Jokowi and his supporters are like flogging a dead horse because in the 2019 presidential election, Jokowi’s campaign team used OCCRP data to attack Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, whose names had appeared in the Panama Papers.
The Panama Papers is a collection of documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, which provided offshore business services from Panama. A total of 1.2 million financial documents, most of them related to tax evasion, were obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and subsequently leaked through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) working with the OCCRP and other newsrooms across the world.
President Prabowo Subianto has done the right thing by not joining in the defense of Jokowi. The international community’s negative assessment of Jokowi is entirely a private matter, including if there are widespread calls for him to be put on trial.
Jokowi is now reaping the fruits of his ambition to hold on to power.
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