Clean Is Not Enough

HARIS Azhar opened the meeting with some trepidation. Taking place at the office of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) in Jakarta in mid-October 2013, the meeting included in its agenda items that were super-heavy: from cases of human rights that did not go anywhere during President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration to the non-performance of the House of Representatives (DPR). "We had racked our brains trying to figure out how to change the DPR's face," Haris, of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), told Tempo last week.

At the meeting, also present was Taufik Basari, a legislative candidate active in advocacy. This prompted the idea to promote Taufik and seven of their friends as candidates for the legislature in 2014 emerged. Subsequently, a preliminary idea was born to encourage good people to sit in the DPR. A lively debate ensued as they were determining the criteria for selecting who should be encouraged.