Jakarta (ANTARA News) - A number of religious figures have urged President Joko Widodo to stop efforts to revise the law on Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) by the House of Representatives (DPR).
"We urged President Jokowi (Joko Widodo) to stop the revision effort because seeing the draft revision it will only weaken (KPK)," Catholic priest Benny Susetyo said at a meeting of inter-faith figures on corruption here on Sunday.
He said pressures from the public should make the President stop the revision and meet his promise that the government is committed to fighting corruption.
To deal with the current emergency caused by corruption Susetyo said strong will from the leader to eradicate corruption and reject any effort to weaken the effort is needed.
The chairman of Islamic organization Muhammadiyah, Hajriyanto Y Tohari said he suspected that the President might have a hidden agenda by allowing the people to be involved in a polemic over the KPK law revision.
"I suspect there is a hidden agenda behind him allowing people to have a polemic over the revision issue. Will he let the people to continue with it," he said.
In view of that he called on the President to not allow the people to be in the polemic any longer by immediately stating whether or not he agrees with it.
The decision to include the KPK law revision into the national legislation program this year is a joint decision of the government and DPR and so the President must show his firm stand by asking for the postponement of the discussion, not allowing the DPR to discuss and making the DPR to be the scapegoat, he said.
The DPR was initially scheduled to discuss the revision on Feb. 18 but it later decided to postpone until Feb. 23.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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