Indonesia presidential hopefuls pledge to boost troubled anti-graft agency

Indonesia’s presidential candidates have pledged to strengthen the government’s anti-corruption agency, laying out their plans ahead of the country’s Feb. 14 election, to counter pervasive graft in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
The candidates’ promises, made at a dialogue late on Wednesday, come as experts bemoan a slowdown in the country’s fight against graft amid an erosion of the powers of its once-vaunted Corruption Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials as the KPK.
The election sees leading candidate Prabowo Subianto, the defence minister and former general, facing off against former provincial governors Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan.
Anies, the former governor of the capital Jakarta, said he would bring Indonesia’s battle against graft back on track by strengthening the KPK and revising the law governing the agency.
“We want to return the KPK as an authoritative institution in the legal sense and this means revising the KPK law,” he said at the live streamed event held by the KPK and attended by its top officials and all candidates.