CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Official Moguls 181
percentages that could have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Similar deals involved oil and timber concessions and international bids to
construct factories (Robertson-Snape, 1999;King,2000; Hornick, 2001).
After Suharto – ?
Resentment of corruption – notably, but not limited to, Suharto’s wealth
and the fortunes amassed by his children and relatives – mounted during
the 1990s, reinforced by resurgent regional, religious, and ethnic antagonisms.
When the Asian economic crisis of 1997 hit Indonesia with full
force it both disrupted the growth that had given many citizens a modest
but real stake in the regime and dried up the funds supporting Suharto’s
patronage network (Robertson-Snape, 1999: 618). State institutions,
including the bureaucracy and judiciary, had long been weak and compromised
(and remain so today); thus, when Suharto’s personal authority
was undermined the political settlement collapsed. Students took to the
streets demanding his ouster; one of their most frequent chants –
‘‘Korrupsi, Kollusi, Nepotisme’’ (KKN), or ‘‘corruption, collusion, nepotism’’
(Robertson-Snape, 1999: 589) voiced the grievances of millions.
After Suharto was replaced by President B. J. Habibie there was widespread
hope that the New Order and its abuses had been swept aside. At
least sixty new political parties were formed in the early months of the
Habibie government (Seabrook, 1998). But KKN scarcely came to an end;
indeed many practices continue, now lacking the structure provided by
family ties, a dominant President, military monitoring, and Golkar discipline.
The result is corruption that is if anything even more disruptive –
both an unstable universe of fiefdoms and mini-monopolies like that seen
in China and a scramble to meet the rising costs of multiparty politics and
patronage resembling the experience of Kenya. Political turmoil produced
three weak Presidents in a row and did nothing to strengthen state institutions.
Elections turned into a scramble for political money; legislators,
faced with the task of funding campaigns, became more adept at demanding
payments for favors and support (Malley, 2003: 144–145). The new
Indonesia has experienced significant liberalization of the economy from
the mid-1980s onwards, and a sudden political decompression beginning
in 1998, in the absence of a sound state framework and civil society; it now
must contend with ‘‘hundreds of little Suhartos’’ (MacIntyre, 2003: 17).
What next for Indonesia?
New Order corruption began in an authoritarian system with very weak
state institutions, reached well beyond elite circles to distribute various