Coffee and Corruption: When the Shop Only Counts the Envelopes Under the Table
Notes from a Coffee Shop on a Definition That Shrinks Like a Jumper Washed Too Hot
That morning my coffee arrived with a curious piece of news. In the corner of my regular coffee shop sat a retired gentleman, whose eyes were always sharper than any cashier's, frowning over his newspaper. There was talk, he said, of redefining corruption in Indonesia. No longer as anything that makes the public purse leak, but chiefly as the act of taking a bribe. The reference point was an international convention we have ratified, and the reasoning sounded courteous enough: those who run state investment bodies and state-owned enterprises should not be afraid to take business decisions that genuinely carry risk. I took a sip. The coffee tasted no different, yet somehow I felt as though the locks on this Indonesian country's kitchen had just been changed.
To make sense of the idea, let us borrow this very coffee shop. Imagine the owner employs a cashier and a buyer of supplies. Until now the rule has been simple: if the till runs short because the cashier abused his position, he answers for it, whether or not he pocketed an envelope from a supplier. The new proposal reads differently. The cashier is guilty only if there is proof he accepted an envelope. If the till runs short because he bought a thousand sacks of beans from an acquaintance at an unreasonable price, that is called business risk. When the owner asks why the till is empty, the answer will come calmly and most professionally: so sorry, sir, that is the risk of doing business.
There is wisdom worth acknowledging in the worry behind the proposal. It is hardly fair for an honest buyer to be jailed simply because the coffee he bought did not sell. Fear of a misstep can freeze an entire kitchen, with nobody daring to brew anything new. But the right remedy for a buyer afraid of error is clearer fencing, not the removal of every fence. That fencing might take the form of written guidelines for business decisions, recorded meetings and sensible checks, so that the honest are protected and the crooked are still caught. Taking down the fence to protect the honest buyer is no different from letting everyone in, including those who never meant to brew anything at all.
For here lies the heart of the matter. Corruption, as we have understood it so far, does not take the form of envelopes under the table alone. In Indonesian statute books it also covers abuse of authority, embezzlement in office, extortion, and certain kinds of gratuities. The international convention cited as the basis is, according to some experts, not as narrow as the headline it is made to carry. It speaks too of abuse of office, trading in influence, embezzlement and money laundering. Some scholars do take the opposite view, holding that the element of state loss is unusual in many other countries, and we ought to hear them out. Yet to read a convention that thick and remember only one word on its cover, bribery, is rather like buying a full cookbook and using only the page on boiling water.
A definition that shrinks in this way is like a jumper washed too hot. The thieves do not become fewer; only the garment shrinks, leaving parts of the body uncovered. Conduct long regarded as corrupt, such as odd decisions riddled with conflicts of interest yet lacking proof of an envelope, could become hard for the law to reach. And, ironically, those who most readily shelter behind the phrase business risk are not the honest buyers. They are those most skilled at making a loss look like an act of market fate. In any coffee shop, so sorry, that is the risk of doing business is the favourite sentence of a man whose till has gone missing without a receipt.
I am puzzled, too, by the timetable. It is said that the government and the House of Representatives plan to pass a law on asset forfeiture for criminal proceeds before the year is out, so that the fruits of crime can be seized and returned to the state. A noble plan. Yet a small question comes from the corner table: how do we seize assets from conduct whose definition has just been narrowed so that it no longer counts as corruption? The warehouse door is flung wide to recover stolen goods, while the garden fence is pulled in so that many no longer count as thieves. These two policies ought to run side by side, not cancel each other out.
So, if this shop truly wishes to be bold and safe at once, there is a middle path that need not change the meaning of a word. Draw a clearer line between a reasonable business decision and abuse of authority. Affirm protection for decision-makers who act in good faith and in the open. Strengthen the way losses are calculated so that it no longer looks arbitrary, including settling which body has the authority to count them. That way, the honest need not fear brewing, and the crooked have nowhere to hide. Even the bitterest satire, in the end, wants only to say one thing: do not mend a leak by taking the bucket from beneath the drip.
I finished my coffee slowly. It still tasted like coffee, neither more bitter nor sweeter. But I know the easiest coffee to drink is the kind whose measure is clear, whose beans are clear, whose cashier is clear, and whose books are open to anyone who cares to ask. And when a shop sets out to change the meaning of the word leak, perhaps what most needs checking is no longer the dictionary, but who will benefit most from the new definition.
