Jakarta. House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon has declared corruption the “oil” that keeps the country running, claiming that graft and economic growth go hand-in-hand.

“Which would you rather have: No corruption and no development, or a little corruption and development?” Fadli, from the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), said at a discussion in Jakarta on Saturday as quoted by Detik.com.

“In many developing countries, corruption is the oil that keeps development going,” he said.

He also appeared to condone the massive corruption committed by officials in the New Order regime of the late strongman Suharto, saying their embezzlement of non-discretionary funds from the state budget was never considered corruption back then, but that today such an act would be considered a crime.

“Back then we had [embezzlement] but at least we had growth. Roads were built and so on,” Fadli said. “Now, though, we have a lot of ‘corruption’ but no growth.”

The solution, he said, was to find ways to close the loopholes such that acts that would currently be considered graft became permissible.

“For instance, if someone wants to apply for a passport and they pay a bribe, that’s considered corruption. There should be a system where they are allowed to pay to fast-track the process,” he said.

Fadli also took issue with the growing number of antigraft investigations launched by law enforcement agencies, in particular the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). He argued that the true measure of whether the country’s anti-corruption campaign was working should be a declining number of cases.

“Is an increasing number of investigations an achievement? If the number was going down, that would be an achievement,” he said at the same discussion as quoted by Tribunnews.com.