Yogyakarta- Budget politic done by Indonesian government nowadays is not transparent, whereas not transparent budget will only support corruption.  Therefore, public must always criticize the use of budget politic done by government, so public knows budget position and fund allocation. Eventually public knows if budget misuse happens.

 

That was stated by one of Muhammadiyah Central Executives, Dr. Haedar Nasir, when distributing donation during the opening ceremony of ‘Training Advokasi Anggaran or Budget Advocacy Training’ at Industrial Training and Education Center, Gedongkuning, Yogyakarta on Monday (24/10). The training is done by Public Empowerment Council of Muhammadiyah Central Executive (MPM PP Muhammadiyah) cooperating with Human Rights Research Center of Islamic University of Indonesia (Pusham UII). It is conducted from Monday to Wednesday (24-26/10) and attended by representatives of Muhammadiyah Regional Executives (PWM) from some regions such as Semarang, Solo, Surabaya, etc.

 

Haedar says that budget use must be transparent. "Recently, budget politic is full of closedness, for example a banggar (budget body of DPR) case. The case is full of trick, broker, and mafia in which it causes budget allocation tends to be corrupted. Therefore there must always be transparency in budget use," said he. The lecturer of Social and Political Sciences of Muhammadiyah University of Yogyakarta (UMY) also says that eradicating corruption and controlling financial management are not easy. "The system is still so messy that it has a bad impact on people," he said. Public must know how budget is allocated. "Every cent of public money spent must be known what it is used for," said he.

 

Therefore, openness and control of budget are important. Budget control must be done or must reach all levels of public. "The control is done by various organization, not only certain organization such as ICW (Indonesian Corruption Watch), Pukat or NGOs. If it is only limited to the three organizations, controlling process done is also limited," said he.

 

Another effort is by doing bureaucratic transparency. According to him, bureaucracy in ministry, judicative, legislative, and executive can cause a corrupt chance. "So there should be bureaucratic transparency," said he. Haedar also says that basically corruption damages many people in which the budget used for the poor is embezzled. Misconduct happens and mentality degrades, so there must be improvement to increase public mentality in all levels.

 

“Starting from political elites, bureaucrats, and businessmen, mental degradation makes them loot people and state's money, whereas there are still a lot of people living in poverty. This is because looting ideology has happened, so when people do it, they don't realize it is a looting form. Even they think the action is not bad," he said.

 

Haedar also reminds that there should be mental advocacy. This is done to increase moral power to curb or press willingness to do corruption. "There should be mental advocacy in which people are taught to get their rights as they are, not to get things or money not belonging to their right. Muhammadiyah has a role in this position. Through MPM, Muhammadiyah must have a character, then build independency, but don't let an established system be broken," he said.

 

(trans by hamzah - uhamka)