Police motivate personnel to do good through award

Jakarta (ANTARA) – National Police (Polri) chief, General Listyo Sigit Prabowo, has organized the Hoegeng Awards 2023 to encourage personnel to continue to do good and innovate in carrying out their duties.

The Hoegeng Awards were inspired by the phenomenon of #percumalaporpolisi or #ItisUselesstoReporttothePolice hashtag on social media, Polri’s public relations head Inspector General Dedi Prasetyo informed here on Tuesday.

Article 30, Paragraph 40, of the 1945 Constitution stipulates that the police is a state instrument that maintains public security and order by protecting, guarding, serving the community, and enforcing the law.

“The Hoegeng Awards implementation was first initiated by the Polri chief, Listyo Sigit Prabowo, during a working meeting with (the House’s) Commission III in January 2022,” Prasetyo said.

According to him, the National Police institution has been under the spotlight. He recalled former President Abdurrahman Wahid’s (Gus Dur’s) satirical remarks that there are only three honest policemen—the late former police chief Hoegeng Iman Santoso, a statue of a policeman, and the “sleeping policeman,” an idiom for speed bumps.

“Gus Dur’s humor seems to have legitimized that it is very difficult to find honest police with integrity in this country,” Prasetyo observed.

Therefore, the Hoegeng Awards are focusing on the Polri’s positive impact on the wider community by invoking Santoso, the esteemed former police chief, as a role model.

There were three categories in the 2022 Hoegeng Awards: Innovative Police, Dedicated Police, and Police with Integrity.

In 2023, the award has five categories, namely Police with Integrity, Innovative Police, Dedicated Police, Women and Children Protecting Police, and Border (Tapal Batas) Police.

The recipients of the 2023 Hoegeng Awards will be decided by a board of experts, including Deputy Speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), Arsul Sani; National Police Commission member Poengky Indarti; and national coordinator of the Gusdurian Network Indonesia, Alissa Qotrunnada Wahid.

The nominees for the awards will have to be active members of the police, not have a negative record in internal police data, have had an impact on the wider community, have a positive image in the surrounding community, and uphold the integrity and implement the Presisi (Precision) principles.