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Culture of secrecy persists 18 years after democratic reforms

Jakarta Post - October 17, 2016

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Ina Parlina and Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – When the Central Information Commission (KIP) ruled last week that an investigative report on the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib was public information that needed to be disclosed, hopes were high that President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo might finally shed some new light on the case.

But those hopes were quickly crushed when the government responded by saying that it did not have the report and did not know its whereabouts.

It did not take long before the fiasco turned into a blame game between officials in Jokowi's administration and supporters of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who received the Munir report in 2005.

The brouhaha over the whereabouts of the Munir report is a reminder of how a culture of secrecy persists in the country even after it enacted the Freedom of Information Law in 2008.

Under the law, the KIP was established in 2009 as an adjudicator to hear disputes on information between the public and government bodies in non-litigation rulings. But as of today, the KIP remains a toothless body, having no legal power to enforce its rulings.

The law allows related parties in an information dispute to take a KIP ruling to the state administrative court (PTUN) within 14 days after the official ruling document is received. However, the PTUN also has no enforcement mechanism.

As of September, the KIP has handled 863 information disputes from a total of 2,635 disputes filed with the organization. As many as 22 cases have been brought to the PTUN. Without the goodwill of all public institutions and a strong government commitment to push for improved transparency, the KIP will remain powerless.

The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), for instance, won a major dispute with the National Police over its investigation into the allegedly "fat" bank accounts of a number of police generals in 2010. The KIP ruled in favor of the graft watchdog and ordered the police to name the owners of the bank accounts.

The police have refused to comply, arguing that the bank account details constitute private information and the police cannot reveal the results of their investigation.

"It was a dead-end at that time so we turned to the KIP in the hope of accessing that information," Tama said. "We thought it could be an answer to our problem. But it didn't work."

Rumadi Ahmad, a KIP commissioner, confirmed that many institutions ignored its rulings. "[The key thing is] good will from all related parties, including public institutions, to comply with our rulings and laws that demand transparency of information," he said.

In a 2015 KIP survey on the participation of public institutions in supporting freedom of information, participation levels continued to be on the low side, with only 180 public institutions from the 386 surveyed by the KIP reporting back to the commission.

"Actually, there is a mechanism in place to prosecute those who fail to obey the rulings. However, it requires related parties to file a report with the police," he added, referring to a provision in the law that says non-compliant public institutions can face a maximum penalty of Rp 5 million (US$385) in fines or a one-year prison sentence.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/17/culture-secrecy-persists-18-years-after-democratic-reforms.html.