Indonesia’s president promised reform. Yet it is he who has changed

AGREE OR DISAGREE: “Homosexuals should be given corporal punishment.” That is one of the many odd questions posed in a civil-service exam taken by the 1,300 employees of Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in April. The formerly independent anti-graft agency is to be folded into the civil service, thus requiring its staff to pass an entrance test. Yet the exam was not the standard one taken by all hopefuls. Instead, it was written specially for the KPK, with input from the armed forces and intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies. It included questions about workers’ sex lives and their views on various minorities. Seventy-five employees failed, among them some of the commission’s best investigators. Two-thirds were sacked.

Indonesia is awash with corruption. Last year, it scored 37 out of 100 on a corruption index produced by Transparency International, a global watchdog, lower even than Brazil (38) or India (40). The KPK was set up in 2003 to tackle the scourge. Its investigations of company bosses, bureaucrats, politicians and senior police officers have resulted in the convictions of over 900 people, a clutch of cabinet ministers among them.