TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan has again opined that graft sting operation or OTT no longer needs to be launched when the digital ecosystem is running well. He cited an example; the digitalization in the procurement of the State Budget (APBN) that amounted to Rp1,200 trillion through e-Catalogs.

“This year, [the digitalization] has reached 95 percent. I said that if the ecosystem is good, OTT won't be needed in the future because people can't steal anymore,” Luhut said at a religious event broadcast on the Huria Kristen Batak Protestant’s YouTube Channel, quoted by Tempo on Tuesday, January 10, 2023.

He believed that the use of e-catalogs brought a positive impact on government spending, which was evident from the absence of arrests of regional heads over cases of regional budget or APBD misuse.

“Look at the past 6 months, have any regional heads been arrested because of the APBD? No one. Yet we are not aware of that,” he claimed.

In December 2022, Luhut voiced his argument that OTT was not a good way to combat corruption. “OTT is actually not good for this country. That's really bad,” he said on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at the launching event of the 2023-2024 Corruption Prevention Action in Jakarta.

His statement discrediting the Corruption Eradication Commission or KPK's method of uncovering perpetrators of corruption was not the first time. On April 13, 2021, he stated that OTT did not cause a deterrent effect on perpetrators.

Luhut's opinions received a strong reaction from anti-corruption activists. Former KPK senior investigator Mochamad Praswad Nugraha on December 21, 2022, assessed that the minister did not understand the meaning of OTT.

According to him, OTT is actually a follow-up to the enforcement of the whistleblowing system. Simply put, it is the KPK's real effort to act on suspected corruption after obtaining information from the public or certain parties.

RIRI RAHAYU | HENDRIK KHOIRUL MUHID

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