http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2125&Itemid=175
Indonesian President's Reform Credentials at Risk
Written by Our Correspondent
Monday, 02 November 2009
Yudhoyono waffles instead of providing strong backing for his anti-graft
agency
The confrontation between Indonesia's notoriously corrupt police and its
beleaguered Corruption Eradication Commission has erupted into a major test for
the reform credentials of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who may be
risking his popularity and even his political agenda by refusing to take action.
The public outcry has been strong, with reform-minded NGOs and common
people alike speaking out against the arrests. The issue has dominated the
news, drowning out a National Summit the president held last week with business
leaders to set policy targets for his new term in office.
Over the weekend, more than 200,000 people joined a Facebook group
(Gerakan 1.000.000 Facebookers Dukung Chandra Hamzah & Bibit Samad Riyanto)
created to provide support for two deputy chiefs of the anticorruption agency,
known by its Indonesian initials KPK, who were arrested last week by the
National Police and charged with abuse of power and extortion. The arrests were
made despite widely distributed verbatim tape transcripts of law enforcement
officials conspiring to frame the two, Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra Hamzah.
The Facebook group seems certain to pass its one million member goal, a
remarkable feat in a country where Internet penetration is just a bit above 10
percent.
The arrests were the latest round in a complex face off that has been
underway for months as the police have insisted that the two deputies are
crooked. Their supporters say the police are trying to weaken the commission as
an act of revenge since a number of high ranking police officials have been the
target of anti-corruption investigations.
With the charges now headed for court, Yudhoyono said last week he would
allow due process to unfold. That is all well and good but it seems clear that
he has done nothing to hold the police in check or to sort out the mess before
it reached a crisis point.
The issue is made more complex since the KPK, a cornerstone of
Yudhoyono's claim to be a reformer, has its own powers of investigation,
prosecution and trial - which is one reason the body has been able to throw
corrupt officials into jail in one of the most notoriously bent countries in
the world.
Yudhoyono is seemingly caught between his ambition to clean up,
industrialize and modernize the country, which has joined the G20 group of
industrialized nations and seeks to join China and India as a major force in
Asia, and a desire by many powerful allies to see the KPK go away.
There is no question the KPK can be irritating, even to a president. In
November 2008, the KPK arrested Aulia Pohan, whose daughter is married to the
president's son. Yudhoyono's family, particularly his wife, were said to be
infuriated. Aulia, a former central bank deputy governor, was ultimately jailed
for four and a half years on bribery charges.
Relying on sweeping powers, including the right to wiretap and secretly
record conversations, issue travel bans, order suspensions from office, block
bank accounts, take over investigations from police and the attorney general
the agency has gone after members of parliament, ambassadors, the former chief
of police and other members of the central bank and achieved a 100 percent
conviction rate in its court, which was hamstrung in September by a new law
diluting its powers.
Despite considerable evidence that the two antigraft officials are being
held because they were investigating police corruption, Yudhoyono told a press
conference Friday that he would let the law take its course. But the
inescapable conclusion is that if the law takes its course, the two could be
convicted in a kangaroo court proceeding and the police suspected of taking
bribes will be let off the hook. Yudhoyono's pledge to let the system work
looks disingenuous at best and perilous to his own political survival.
Yudhoyono, an analyst said, is failing to see that his decisive electoral
victory in July, with 60.1 percent of the vote, was a mandate to transform the
country. With his second and last five-year term just underway and with no
major political opposition to his rule, he could be a powerful force for reform
- if that is what he wants. Instead, the police-KPK circus looks like business
as usual in a country renowned for opaque deal making and questionable courts.
Although the power of the KPK to actually transform the country may be
largely symbolic, that symbolism has been a potent force in creating at least
the image that something can be done about corruption. Indonesia is tied for
126th of 180 countries in the world on Transparency International's respected
Corruption Index, up from 137th in 2005, a modest rise largely attributable to
the actions of the KPK, which came into being in 2002 and has been strengthened
under Yudhoyono since 2004.
In addition to the enormous response to the Facebook page, a major
collection of national leaders added their voices to the protest, including
former President Abdurrahman Wahid, who went to KPK headquarters on Saturday to
ask for the release of the two from detention and to "put my name on the line
in this case."
Political reform groups signed a joint statement asking Yudhoyono to
establish a commission to investigate what they called a plot by the Attorney
General's Office and the National Police to destroy the KPK.
Yudhoyono himself was said to be furious that transcripts of wiretapped
phone conversations suggested that he had supported the plan to frame the two.
He called ministers and law enforcement officials to his office Friday to
demand an explanation, but his press conference later that day was viewed as a
depressing indication that nothing would be done. As president, he said, he
could not and would not intervene in legal proceedings or ask the police not to
carry out their duties.
"I have to follow the law. I have never asked for somebody to be arrested
or released - not my aides, a member of the Democratic Party, not even my
relatives," he said.
National Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters in a
two-hour press conference Friday that investigations of the two anti-graft
officials would remain closed to the public until they reached the courts, but
denied allegations that the case had been fabricated by police to muzzle the
agency.
The case, he said, stems from testimony by the former KPK head, Antasari
Azhar, who remains in jail on charges of masterminding the murder of a rival
for the hand of an attractive young golf caddy. The rumor mill in Jakarta has
been churning with conspiracy theories that even Antasari's murder charge is
somehow part of a police "plot" to undo the KPK.
Antasari, Bambang said, alleged that fugitive businessman Anggoro Widjojo
had told him he had paid Rp 6.7 billion ($703,000) in bribes to the KPK
commissioners in August or September to halt the investigation against him. In
addition, Anggoro's brother, Anggodo Widjojo, said he had paid the money to a
supposed middleman, Ary Muladi, who allegedly took the money from Anggoro and
paid it to Chandra and Bibit.
Ary, however, has recanted his testimony, saying it had been fabricated.
Antasari has also backed away from any claim that KPK officials took money,
saying he had been forced by police to change his testimony to support the
charges.
Although Yudhoyono has come under fire for supposedly allowing the
bare-knuckle confrontation between the police and the antigraft commission to
fester, he told reporters he had sought on past occasions to smooth relations
between the KPK and other agencies and said he had no intention of disbanding
the KPK. "If there is an attempt from any party to dismiss the KPK, I will be
at the fore in fighting it."
Nonetheless, if the agency is hamstrung, as seems likely given its many
enemies in the police and the legislature, "The public will remember that the
destruction of the KPK occurred during SBY's leadership," Teten Masduki,
secretary general of Transparency International Indonesia, told reporters.
That is hardly the legacy Yudhoyono would want.
