Irfan Kamil, Jakarta – The results of a Kompas Research and Development (Litbang) survey show that Corruption Eradication Commission's (KPK) prestige is at its lowest level in the last five years.
The survey was conducted by telephone on July 19-21 and interviewed 502 respondents aged 17 and above from 34 provinces.
"The tendency for the KPK's prestige to decline is illustrated by the results of a Litbang Kompas face-to-face survey in June 2022", explained Litbang Kompas researcher Rangga Eka Sakti as quoted by the Kompas Daily newspaper on Monday August 8.
"The KPK's prestige was recorded at a figure of 57 percent, the lowest in the last five years", he said.
In a January 2015 survey the KPK's prestige was still being maintained at 88.5 percent, and then it declined to 68.8 percent in October 2015. The figure then rose again to 78.0 percent in April 2016, but then fell to 76.6 percent in October 2016.
The KPK's image rose again to 84.8 percent in April 2017 and again in October 2017 to 87.3 percent. Then the anti-graft commission's prestige continued to decline to 65.8 percent in August 2020 until finally rising again in April 2021 to 76.9 percent.
Once again the figure declined in October 2021 to 68.6 percent although in January 2022 it managed to rise to 76.9 percent.
"Over time the institution's image has tended to decline, particularly after the KPK Law was revised in September 2019", said Sakti.
This is despite the revisions to the KPK Law being strongly opposed by the public three years before. The public beloved that the revised law contained articles which would in fact undermine the KPK's role in efforts to eradicate corruption.
It is not surprising, said Sakti, that the revisions to the KPK Law were seen as being an obstacle to the commission's performance. "The results of the survey show that the revisions to the KPK Law have now became one of the KPK's weaknesses", he said.
Of the revisions to the KPK Law, there were two issues most highlighted by the public, namely the formation of the KPK Supervisory Board (Dewas) and changing the status of KPK employees to state civil servants (ASN).
"Based on the survey, almost a quarter of respondents believe that the change in the status of investigators to ANS became one of the current KPK's principle weaknesses. Around one-fifth of respondents were of the view that the Dewas has become the main problem", said Sakti.
"This makes sense, the change in their status along with the presence of control mechanisms in the form of the Dewas had the potential to make the work of eradicating corruption by the KPK vulnerable to being disrupted by conflicts of interest", he explained.
The survey sample was determined randomly by a Litbang Kompas respondent panel in accordance with the proportion of the population in 34 provinces. The survey method had a 95 percent level of confidence and a 4.37 percent margin of error in taking a simple random sample. Nevertheless, errors outside of the sample selected may possibly have occurred.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Survei Litbang "Kompas": Citra KPK Terendah dalam 5 Tahun Terakhir".]
