Jakarta –
Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam) Mahfud Md said Indonesia has experienced economic progress from time to time. Not only that, Mahfud assessed that the poverty rate continues to decline even though corruption cases often occur.
Mahfud made the statement in the Tadarus Democracy webinar with the theme ‘Economy and Democracy’, Saturday (1/5/2021). He said the public should not ignore Indonesia’s economic growth despite the corruption problem.
Mahfud said that before independence, almost all of its people were poor, which was estimated at 99 percent. The poverty rate, he continued, continued to decrease at the end of Sukarno’s reign to 54 percent.
Since the fall of Soeharto in 1998, Mahfud said the poverty rate continued to decline to 18 percent. This figure continued to decline in the era of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), reaching 11.7 percent until the era of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) at 9.7 percent.
“When Pak Jokowi was in power for the first 5 years, the poverty rate fell to 9.1. Because there was a pandemic this past year, the poverty rate rose again to 9.7. What does that mean, there is progress even though there is a lot of corruption because Indonesia is very rich, if managed even though it is corrupt, it still has a lot of benefits for the people, especially if it is managed later cleanly from corruption, “he said.
Mahfud added the relationship between democracy and law in a country. The political configuration that arose, he said, had an effect on existing legal attitudes.
“I always say this, corruption is always seen as a phenomenon of violation of the law. But in my dissertation, the law is actually good or bad, whether the legal substance is made or enforced, it depends on democracy,” he said.
“If democracy runs well then the law will be good, if democracy is bad then the law will also be bad. The democratic political configuration appears, the law will be responsive. Then the political configuration appears authoritarian and hegemonic, the law will be very very conservative,” he continued. Mahfud.
(upl / upl)
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