Jakarta (May 5, 2011) – Transparency International Indonesia (TII) is welcoming, HE. Sørend Pind, Danish Minister for Development Cooperation, during his visit to Indonesia today (5/5). The visit is set up to see the progress of foreign aid provided by Denmark through its development agency, Danida.

HE. Sørend Pind initially conducts a meeting with civil society representatives and business people to discuss outcomes of their support through democratic reform and the anti-corruption movement in this country. Conducted on May 5th at Financial Club, Jakarta, it highlights the importance of civil society empowerment and democratic consolidation in anti-corruption strategies.

While Indonesia’s democratic transition has achieved undeniable successes, yet democratic consolidation still does not meet the expectation. Institutional reform is still hindered by corruption, weak rule of law, insufficient levels of transparency and accountability, inadequate political representation and a political system heavily influenced by money politics. Despite promising steps by Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the Indonesian government fails to tackle systemic corruption. Indonesia still ranks very low at the 110th place on Corruption Perception Index, stagnating below score of 3 (on a 0 to 10 scale) overtime. The existing reform already showed limitations in addressing corruption, calling for changes in approach by empowering the civil society to strengthen political accountability and collective action with business people.

The visit is very valuable considering that the Government of Denmark is one of the very few donor countries that still believe in civil society as the main pillar of development assistance. Support to civil society movements rooted in the tradition of social movement and the spirit of freedom in more than a century. They also learnt that cooperation with the government alone is not sufficient. Development assistance and democracy always require intensive participation of and dialogue with civil society to improve the social, economic and political condition.

Denmark strongly supports civil society groups who are able to collaborate with businesses in carrying out their programs. Their experience in Africa for example, shows the importance of prioritizing wider cooperation with business groups because it helps alleviating poverty through economic programs and providing employment. This kind of initiative is not an easy task given that NGOs generally are rather reluctant or do not have enough access to private sector.

Transparency International Indonesia fortunately has experience in building collective action with business groups. Among other things are a program to reform of business licensing, business initiatives without bribes and the Integrity Pact initiatives with businesses in district level.

Democracy and anti-corruption issue is the major of concern to the Danish government in Indonesia. It departs from its Development Cooperation Strategy that believes that without rights to vote, express opinions, work etc, it is impossible to achieve human dignity to alleviate poverty.  With limited freedom and widespread corruption, the benefit of development is never be enjoyed by grass-root people. Therefore, Danida supports people's empowerment programs in order to encourage the political participation by the citizens in a democracy and to fight corruption.

The Government of Denmark clearly takes a different line from donor trends today. We can see this approach as a critique toward other donors who heavily emphasize instrumental support to the government. The future will see the return to civil society engagement since supporting government alone has not been able to meet with people’s needs and donor expectations.

Indonesia is fortunate to received development assistance from Denmark. Meanwhile partnership enjoyed by Transparency International Indonesia for several years now also shows a good example of the long commitment by Danida to civil society partners. Danida has been very selective in choosing areas of emphasis and partners.  The assistance to support democracy and anti-corruption through the empowerment of civil society Indonesia is a very valuable opportunity in the midst of the mainstream tendency of other donors today. 

Transparency International Indonesia

 

Natalia Soebagio

Chair of Executive Board

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Transparency International Indonesia (TII) is an autonomous chapter of Transparency International (TI) along with more than 90 other chapters worldwide. TII is an NGO network that focuses on the fight against corruption by building coalitions, measure corruption and advocate good governance policies to create a corruption-free environment.