Korupsi

According to Transparency International, Indonesia is the third most corrupt country in the world with Nigeria the second and Bangladesh in the number one spot. (I have heard it said that the only reason Nigeria is number two instead of number one is that they bribed Bangladesh). Corruption is a way of life here, and some of the instances of it are very shocking, and one can become quite angry at the injustice of it.

In the UK it has become a commonplace that the developing world is corrupt, and in fact many people abjure from making charitable donations as they believe their money will pass into the hands of corrupt officials. I was therefore interested to read about the Alvis case in the Guardian regarding the corrupt sale of tanks to Indonesia in 1995.

Britain's controversial sale of tanks to Indonesia was a thoroughly corrupt transaction, according to the Alvis documents released by the court. If the deal were to take place today, it would be a criminal offence under recent legislation. The high court heard that £16.5m was paid into offshore accounts - a rake-off of around 10% of the deal's value. This was paid to Madam Tutut, her real name is Mrs Siti Rakhmana, the eldest daughter of the then president Suharto. Thanks to Tutut, the money came through to buy 50 brand-new light tanks, costing £1.6m each.

It occurs to me that a corrupt transaction requires two parties, and they are both equally corrupted by it. A great deal of the really shocking corruption in the third world involved deals between western companies and foreign governments, and yet we see developing countries as corrupt and transnational corporations such as BAe (the current owner of Alvis) as fine upstanding motors of economic growth.

The corruption here was inspired by the Indonesian Army, which had been bolstered for years by unquestioning support in the West, despite its appalling human rights record. I am not in favour of invading every country that has a nasty regime (as in Iraq), but I do feel rather strongly that we should not sell them arms, and we certainly shouldn't fill their coffers with kick-backs. At the time of the sale of the tanks, John Major's government assured protesters that the tanks would not be used against indigenous people fighting for their rights (for instance in Timor Leste), and as it turns out, they was right. Ironically, there appears to have been no real military demand for such extravagant weapons. Suharto, the court documents reveal, was interested in the tanks merely because he thought the army's existing armoured cars looked unimpressive.

What is worse? That a myopic, digenerate, immoral Tory government sold weapons that may have been used to oppress the populous, or that they sold expensive toys to a corrupt regime that was already in hock to the west for billions of dollars, money that one day will need to be wrung from the poor?

From where I am sitting, it seems that corruption can come in many forms, and has many interested parties. All I know is that ordinary Indonesians are paying for it, every day, when their children die of malnutrition or malaria, and when they cannot take their crops to the market because the roads have still not been repaired. Just one of those tanks, $1.6m, could transform the lives of people on this island.

There is a chink of light in all this. Gallup carried out a recent poll for Transparency International as part of its 'Voice of the People Survey' carried out between June and September 2004. While corruption remains a problem in many parts of the world, it seems that SBY, the new President of Indonesia is already having an effect on the topic.

In the poll, Indonesia was the most optimistic country of the world, with two out of three respondents forecasting a reduction in corruption in the coming years.

If corruption also reduces outside Indonesia, say in British arms manufacturers, then maybe there is reason to be more cheerful.