Papua A Paradise for Corrupt Officials

Bintang Papua, 27 June 2011 - Jayaura: Papua is a veritable paradise for people who corrupt the people's money while a number of top-level officials behave as if they are beyond the law,' said Thomas Sugi, chairman of the Students Executive Board of the Faculty of Law at Cenderawasih University. He was speaking at a demonstration of youth and students outside the DPRP - Papua Provincial Legislative Assembly.

The students urged the DPRP to draft a regulation, known as a Perdasi, dealing with corruption and stamping it out. It has been estimated that as much as Rp. 28 trillion of OTSUS - special autonomy - funds were embezzled during the eight years from 2002 - 2010 following the adoption of the OTSUS law, according to the findings of the auditing body, BPK published on 18 April 2011.

Sugi said he hoped that such a regulation would act as a dis-incentive for officials of the province who were thinking of embezzling money that belonged to the people. He said that the students fully support comments made about this problem on a number of occasions by the chief of police of the province, Drs Bekto Suprapto.

But he added that, should the law enforcement agency - the police - be shown to be seeking to protect the corruptors, then they would press for the adoption of a non-confidence motion in the police chief for failing to keep his promise.

On the same occasion, the chief of police of Jayapura, AKBP Imam Setiawan SIK who had been pressed to support efforts to stamp out corruption in Papua declared that the aims of the demonstration were an inspiration to the law enforcement agencies. He said that they would act with all speed via the judiciary in cases where people in the community alleged that corruption had occurred.and would make regular reports to the general public on the matter.

'The chief of police of the province also called on local police chiefs at the sub-district level to report at least three cases of corruption a year that were under investigation..'

And for the current year, he said, we would call for at least five cases to be handled.

ENDS

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