Indonesia & Corruption: a few articles in the past few weeks

[snpark]

So what does the word in the middle really mean?

Don't know if you joking or not but it means how that country is perceived to be corrupt or not, not that it actually is

I mean in Arabic there is a word "wasta" which is like "hadiah" Hadiah is a gift, Arabs often bring gifts to my meetings, evenn just kurma or bakhoor or a gallon of Zamzam etc etc

But wasta is like official bribe money, basically paying for fast track service wink wink

 

[Balifrog]

"money is the most important thing in life" does not necessary mean corruption. It just means pure or exaggerated materialism.

And getting it by any means....

 

[pantaiema]

A bunch of international groups/institutions try to measure global corruption. Also beside the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), there are others such as the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index, the OECD Public Integrity Indicators (OECD PIIs), the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), and the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI).

When come to measuring domestic public-sector corruption (bribery, judicial integrity, administrative red tape), e.g corruption withing the country, Singapore & Hongkong Ranks as one of the cleanest nations on Earth if you use CPI & WJP. Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries based on this measure. I believe those who been living in Indonesia long enough will agree with this.

However when come to Financial Secrecy & Offshore Abuse (FSI) Singapore & Hong Kong rank among the worst. Indonesia is much cleaner/better the reason is simple because Indonesian conglomerates do not operate a massive global offshore financial business hub. They rely on preferential treatment, plundering the national asset, protection which could only work effectively within the countries.

But when come to the household name and the benchmark of macro level corruption the CPI is widely accepted and quoted. But just like big metrics in economics, development or poverty, it gets its fair share of legitimate criticisms.

Here’s the thing: since corruption happens under the table, it's super hard to measure let alone to quantify it with hard numbers. That’s why broad tools like the CPI end up leaning heavily on expert vibes and perceptions. Since it launched back in 1995 as the first major public index to actually rank countries on corruption, it had a massive head start, which is a big reason it's still the most famous one today.