The test questions were then leaked to the media and went viral, sparking criticism for being odd and even offensive to minority groups.

While the names of 51 staff who will be booted out by November are yet to be revealed to the public, senior investigator Novel Baswedan is among the 75 KPK staff who failed the test. Baswedan was the victim of an acid attack that damaged his eyes in 2017 following his role in several high-profile corruption cases.

Another big name is director Giri Suprapdiono, who has won awards from the Indonesian government and taught a class on nationalism at several agencies including at the National Resilience Institute.

In a statement last month, Novel said the test was a “tool used by KPK leaders to remove certain staff who perform well”.

He later warned that his sacking could sound the death knell for the anti-graft body, telling Reuters that, “As part of the ongoing weakening of the KPK I’m worried this will be the final phase.”

Another KPK figure who failed the test, Director for Inter-Agency Cooperation Sujanarko argued that the test had six components but officials had only considered three components before deciding that the 75 staff had failed. By choosing to terminate 51 of them, they were effectively branding them as “damaged”, a stigma that could affect them for years, he said.

“What is the difference, now, between me and a terrorist? Or between me and a separatist?” he asked, in comments sent to reporters.

The KPK has successfully gone after hundreds of politicians and officials since it was set up 17 years ago to weed out endemic graft in the public sector that has hampered economic reforms.

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It used to be one of the country’s most respected agencies and its leaders used to report directly to the president.

But amid repeated efforts by politicians and police to limit its reach, the Indonesian parliament passed a controversial new law in 2019 that would convert KPK staff into civil servants.

Anti-corruption and democracy activists said though that the law did not require the KPK to administer the test as part of this transition.

“The process to convert KPK staff’s status into civil servants should only be a simple administrative process. They had already undergone a long selection process to be selected as KPK staff,” said Titi Anggraini, member of the board of supervisors at Jakarta-based independent NGO The Association for Elections and Democracy, or Perludem.

“However, this process turned into a selection of which staff could stay and which ones should leave.”

The test makers, which include KPK leaders, the National Civil Service Agency, the army and the National Counter-Terrorism Agency, should also consider the track records of the staff who did not pass the test, instead of relying solely on the results of a test that had “controversial and prejudiced” questions, Titi said.

“Some of these names are at the core of the KPK as an institution, so it is strange that they will be let go based solely on their test results. Their dedication and their huge contribution to the corruption eradication effort in Indonesia were not being considered at all,” Titi said.

Critics were also left in the dark on the standards being used to assess the participants’ answers in the test.

Zainal Arifin Mochtar, researcher at the Centre for Anti-Corruption Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said the test was the latest attempt to weaken the 17-year-old institution, which has long been applauded for its integrity and non-discriminatory approach in fighting graft, bribery, and embezzlement.

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“I suspect this is just another orchestrated attempt to weaken the KPK. What makes it different this time around is that the government showed lacklustre support towards the KPK,” Zainal said.

“I fear that [after this the KPK] will no longer have distinction in terms of its personnel, institution, or functions, and will eventually die.”

Titi of Perludem said undermining the KPK would threaten democracy in Indonesia, as a democratic nation required “an ecosystem that is free of corruption”.

“Democracy will be distorted if the fight against corruption is hindered. Democracy then will only be jargon, and it will only be enjoyed by a handful of people. This is quite dangerous,” she said.

Transparency International last year ranked Indonesia as 102nd out of 180 countries and territories on its Corruption Perceptions Index, a decline from 85th in 2019. It scored 37 out of 100, on a scale in which zero is most corrupt.

Not the first time

This is not the first time the KPK’s existence has been threatened by the country’s elite powers. In 2009 and 2012, the police tried to undermine the KPK’s power after it investigated several graft cases that ensnared some high-ranking names at the police. Then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono defended the KPK and demanded improvement from law enforcement agencies.

He also cited a ruling by the Constitutional Court that the transformation process into civil servants “should not come at the cost of the employees”.

However, KPK leaders and other relevant agencies who were involved in the making of the test decided to go against the president’s order. Earlier in the week, they inaugurated 1,271 KPK employees as civil servants, despite requests by some to delay the procession in solidarity with their 75 colleagues.

KPK chief Firli Bahuri dismissed the accusation on Tuesday.

“I’m quite bewildered that someone said that we are trying to remove some staff. There is no attempt to remove anyone. We have followed the mechanism and procedures” in the process to convert KPK staff into civil servants, Firli told reporters.