Antasari Azhar

Antasari heads Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission, a mandated body charged with shining its investigative light into the darkest corners of the country's public service.

During a sojourn several years ago studying commercial law at the University of NSW, he made several visits to Old Sydney Town, the former theme park on the NSW central coast that dramatically portrayed our colonial roots until it closed in 2003.

"My approach to the law now is coloured by my Australian experience," the former public prosecutor says. "I visited Old Sydney Town three times in six months, and I saw there what it was with Australia's history, how strict the early law there was. I was thinking at that time, in fact, how could it be that Australians these days so willingly obeyed the law; how had society become so compliant? You know, just as with Singapore, (in Australia) smoking is generally not allowed, public toilets are clean, when you board a bus the elderly are given a place to sit up the front, that kind of thing.

"Now, I really learned from that. And (at Old Sydney Town) I realised that people must be made afraid first. Only then will they become obedient."

Dioramas depicting floggings and judicial executions in the colony, as well as live-action re-enactments of modern Australia's brutal seeds, became the former public prosecutor's touchstone for how he thought Indonesia's huge need for public service reform could be met. "Open-air courtrooms, a la ancient Rome, that really inspired me," he says. "It meant for us that if we wanted to enforce the law, we mustn't allow permissive thinking at first. First you have to frighten people, then they become compliant. After that, we may allow some permissiveness."

A harsh prescription, perhaps, but Antasari's campaign against Indonesia's porous public sector is showing outstanding results. The Transparency International network last month announced a vastly upgraded result for the country in its annual corruption perceptions index, an outcome welcomed by all observers. "It's fantastic, 30 per cent of the world is now below us," enthuses long-time Indonesia-based anti-corruption warrior Kevin Evans, a former Australian embassy staff member in Jakarta.

Jakarta's rise up the ladder, from 143rd place to 126th and, more important, its edging upwards towards the transparency rating of three on a 10-scale, was attributed by the world organisation in large part to the very public actions of Antasari's bureau.

The agency, known by its Indonesian-language acronym KPK, was created by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, although Antasari has only been at its helm since last December. It boasts its own office of prosecutors and is responsible for an anti-corruption court that operates alongside, and with the same powers as, the regular criminal justice system.

There is a proposal for the accused in Antasari's court to be forced to wear garish prison smocks with the word "corruptor" stencilled across them while on trial, even before any verdict is passed.

Given the poor reputation of the public prosecutor's department, from which Antasari was plucked last year, it has been a signal achievement of the dynamic crime fighter that his former colleagues have been among the key targets of his attentions. Senior prosecutor Tri Urip Gunawan was last month sentenced to 20 years in jail for accepting a $US660,000 bribe to drop an investigation into a serious fraud case at the central Bank Indonesia, and Antasari says the KPK will be making more inquiries related to that case.

Despite allegations of his own complicity in shady dealings while at the South Jakarta prosecutor's office - including in the shambolic prosecution and escape from custody of Tommy Suharto, disgraced scion of the former strongman and now a convicted judge murderer - Antasari is sanguine in self-defence. "I arrived at Tommy's house at 5pm to serve papers on him and he was gone," Antasari says of the controversial sequence of events in November 2000, for which he bore responsibility as chief prosecutor.

"Why should it be that I'm the one who's said to have been late? It was not possible to put him in jail until the Supreme Court made its decision. They should have (ordered him) detained first."

Suharto was on the run for 12 months before his dramatic arrest while sleeping in a Jakarta house, but the escape, which Antasari's critics tried to sheet home to his incompetence, seems finally to have been forgotten amid the successes he has had since.

As well as his pinpoint attacks on the public prosecutor's office, he has made a dent in the culture of embezzlement with impunity at the central bank, including having three senior officials - one of them a former governor - put behind bars.

The commission has also swung its scythe through the national parliament, where bribes in return for favourable law-making have long been a part of the landscape, and - most recently - at the anti-trust commission, where a commissioner and the head of a pay-television network were arrested last month on bribery and collusion charges.

Yet for Antasari - always a political animal at heart - there is no one case more significant than another. It's always, as he learned at Old Sydney Town, about sowing a climate of willing compliance.

"Since I'm a law enforcement official, all cases are the same," he says genially. "Really, what makes me happy is that I can exist in a system that has integrity and which is able to enforce the law, that's all."

On criticism that his spotlight has not been directed towards potentially some of the darkest corners - the Government and cabinet of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who came to office on a strong anti-corruption ticket - Antasari is dismissive.

"The issue of big fish or little fish, that's a subjective matter. What's the measure? For me, corruption is corruption." he says, making the last point in English for emphasis.

Anyway, he says, he tends to take on cases with what he considers enough proof to proceed to trial. Too often in the criminal system, he believes, prosecutions stall on a lack of evidence.

As to whether corruption will ever be eradicated entirely from a society where "compliance fees" are part of the process, Antasari is under no illusions.

"Australia too will never completely eliminate it," he says with a wave of his arm. "What we're after is an improved life, more order, less corrupt activity."

Antasari also insists his agency is as much about education as it is about putting corrupt officials behind bars. To promote this arm of the project, he's allied himself with a range of popular figures, including the veteran Indonesian hard rock band Slank, which this year released an album of corruption-themed songs in Antasari's presence.

There was uproar in parliament over the venture, particularly given that one of the songs on the CD, an old number titled Gosip Jalanan (Street Talk) directly accuses politicians of taking bribes. Antasari, however, sees the band and its millions-strong army of fans, known as Slankers, as just another aspect of what he does. "It's extremely effective if they raise their voices against corruption, at the very least because millions of Slankers then become opposed to corruption," he says. "The KPK will join hands with anyone who is committed to fighting this."

www.transparency.org