There was widespread disbelief when Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) announced that Indonesia’s score had improved by 3 points, from 34 to 37. Not that 37 is a good number, given that the maximum is 100, but the perception that we are doing better is truly hard to believe.
2024 was a political year when all attention was focused on the February presidential election and the November local elections. The presidential election was particularly problematic due to the controversial Constitutional Court’s decision to allow Gibran Rakabuming Raka, son of incumbent President Joko Widodo, to run for vice-president by changing the minimum age requirement. Jaga Pemilu, a movement initiated soon after the Constitutional Court’s decision to monitor the Presidential elections, found that the whole electoral process lacked integrity, that it was rife with pork-barrel politics, vote buying, administrative manipulation and abuse of public resources. With the might of the bureaucracy behind the Prabowo-Gibran ticket, it was no surprise they won.
2024 was also a bad year for the KPK, Indonesia’s once leading anti-corruption agency. Its credibility plunged to its lowest point with the conviction of KPK chairperson Firli Bahuri, at the end of 2023. He was found guilty of extorting a former minister of agriculture convicted of corruption. In May, President Widodo, as required by law, established a selection panel to identify candidates for the 2024-2029 KPK leadership, to be vetted by Parliament. There was wide skepticism over his intention to rebuild the KPK into a credible agency, which turned out to be well-founded. In October, he rushed through the process before the newly elected members of Parliament were sworn into office, ensuring his chosen KPK candidates secured their seats. The newly-elected President Prabowo Subianto must now contend with an anti-corruption agency led by individuals whose political loyalties may not be to him.
During his election campaign, Prabowo declared he would turn the KPK into a center of excellence for the prevention of corruption by way of educating people on the evils of corruption. He also believes that corruption can be resolved by improving the salaries of public officials and procurement systems, prioritizing sectors with the highest public impact, and upgrading the management of state-owned enterprises. There was no mention of raising Indonesia’s CPI score, nor of ensuring the independence of the KPK. Despite persistent media coverage on corruption and abuse of power, how then did Indonesia manage to mark this unexpected upward tick in the CPI?
We need to understand that the CPI is a composite index of the perception of corruption. It is not an index of actual corruption which, given its secretive and illegal nature, is difficult to measure. This method of using a combination of several data sources has been adopted annually since 1995 and is periodically improved. The data sources are surveys of expert and private sector opinions across 180 countries or territories on abuse of power in the public and political sectors.
To reach the score of 37 for Indonesia, Transparency International used 9 data sources, one of which was not used in the 2022 and 2023, namely the World Economic Forum Expert Opinion Survey (WEF EOS). The reason for this exclusion was the low response rate which called into question the integrity of the data. This was not the case in 2024.
Last year, the WEF EOS conducted its survey in March-August, when it became clear that Prabowo-Gibran would lead Indonesia. Their promise that they would continue the policies of Joko Widodo to maintain an investment-friendly climate, must have reassured the business community. The promise of stability and consistency always gives the private sector confidence. This presumably led to the high score of 61 given to Indonesia by the WEF EOS. The same optimism was shared by the respondents of the PERC Asia Risk Guide which gave Indonesia a score of 38, up from 28 in 2023.
However, not all surveys used in the CPI were positive. Respondents of the Global Insight Country Risk Rating were more guarded. They were asked questions regarding a wide range of corruption, from the petty to the grand, and their score for Indonesia dropped significantly, from 47 (2023) to 32 (2024).
All scores of the nine data sources are incorporated in the CPI composite index. Indeed, we should question the methodology of the CPI but we cannot deny the fact that this is the only index which captures the perception of corruption consistently over 30 years, covering a big swath of the globe. If the WEF EOS data were omitted, the score would have dropped to 32-33, lower than last year’s 34. In other words, no progress has been made in our fight against corruption.
The fact remains that corruption is still pervasive and life will become more difficult for the average person. When our democratic institutions are weakened and lose their independence, when our legal system and law enforcement agencies are hijacked by political interests, when big business takes precedence over the marginalized, when differing points of view are stifled, we are no longer able to take those in power into account. This is fertile ground for corruption.
In short, we should not be distracted by the improvement in the CPI score. Much still needs to be done.
Natalia Soebagjo
Chair, Transparency International Indonesia (2011-2017)
