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| Indonesian President Joko Widodo in a file photo. Photo: Reuters/Yuri Gripas |
Indonesian leader's inability to
solve rising crimes against anti-graft fighters has raised uncomfortable
questions at a politically inopportune time
By JOHN
MCBETH JAKARTA | ASIA TIMES | JANUARY 17, 2019 6:25 PM (UTC+8)
Indonesia’s Corruption
Eradication Commission (KPK) has come under a fresh round of harassment in the
middle of a presidential and legislative election campaign where fighting graft
is not, and never has been, a real issue.
In fact, the politicians who could
make it an issue are among the worst culprits and have been in a losing battle
with civil society activists and overwhelming public opinion for years in
trying to find ways to water down the commission’s powers.
Despite the KPK’s fourth change
of leadership since its founding in 2003, opinion polls show it remains the
country’s most trusted institution.
Graft watchdog Transparency
International listed Parliament as Indonesia’s most corrupt institution in 2017, a title it richly
deserved last year after its speaker, former Golkar Party leader Setya Novanto,
was jailed for 15 years for masterminding a US$173 million electronic identity
card scam.
Over 90% of incumbent
parliamentarians are seeking re-election to the expanded 575-seat House of
Representatives (DPR), mostly in their old seats, while a third of upper house
Regional Representative Council (DPD) members are vying for a turn in the lower
house.
President Joko Widodo and
opposition rival Prabowo Subianto may have clean records, but they have paid
only lip service to stemming a seemingly endless problem that continues to cost
the country billions of dollars a year and shows no signs of abating.
Widodo is taking heat from the
Prabowo camp, however, over the failure of the police to solve the April 2017
acid attack on KPK chief investigator Novel Baswedan, 41, who was blinded in
one eye and only returned to his duties a year last year after multiple surgeries.
Two motorcycle-borne attackers
threw a vial of hydrochloric acid in Baswedan’s face as he was returning home
from morning prayers; despite a public outcry police have been either unable or
unwilling to conduct even routine detective work.
The former police officer is a
cousin of Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan, who was supported by Prabowo’s Great
Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) in his controversial 2012 victory over
incumbent Basuki “Ahok” Purnama.
Unlike the military, the national
police reports directly to the president, which puts Widodo directly in the
firing line. Only now – and under election season pressure – has police chief
Tito Karnavian formed a 65-strong team to supposedly delve deeper into the case.
His hand has also been forced by
the KPK’s latest travails, which began earlier this month when a bag containing
what was said to be a pipe bomb was found hanging on a fence at the west
Jakarta residence of KPK chairman Agus Rahardjo.
About the same time, two Molotov
cocktails were thrown at the house of KPK deputy chairman Laode Syarif in the
south Jakarta suburb of Kalibata without causing any damage but sending an
unmistakable message of intimidation that has become all too familiar.
“It is a dangerous job,” Syarif
said in an interview last August with the University of Sydney alumni magazine.
“It affects my life a lot, not just for myself but my family and even my
mother. My sons, when they go to school, must be accompanied by police officers
every day.”
Last July, in what has become a
regular occurrence, a KPK investigator found his car scarred with hydrochloric
acid and its tires slashed after receiving a series of telephoned death threats
in apparent connection with a case he was working on.
The police and KPK have been at
loggerheads because of past probes into corrupt generals whose relatively
modest salaries bely the grossly inflated bank accounts they hold as revealed
by the watchdog Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center.
“Total Failure,” headlined Koran
Tempo daily in a front-page story last week as Karnavian announced the
formation of the new investigation team into the acid attack, which includes
Detachment 88 counter-terrorism officers and several ex-KPK investigators.
The police chief is a former head
of Detachment 88, the elite 1,000-man unit which has played the leading role in
arresting more than a 1,000 Islamic militants across the country over the past
15 years, but has rarely been used for other duties.
International Corruption Watch
(ICW) and other activist groups have accused the police of obstructing the
investigations, despite claims the police have found fingerprints on the
devices used in the latest pipe bomb and Molotov cocktail incidents.
Novel has said Widodo should be
doing more to push the police into reacting to the violent and increasingly
overt backlash against the KPK. “If the president is afraid of uncovering the
truth, then I am very sad,” he told reporters last year.
“There must be no impunity for
the powerful,” Transparency International chairman Jose Ugaz warned last year.
“President Widodo must speak out and take actions that ensure the KPK is safe
from intimidation. Lawmakers must not be allowed to weaken its powers or dodge
its investigations.”
In fact, Parliament has blithely
joined the campaign to undermine the work of the commission, including a failed
attempt to deprive the KPK of the ability to covertly wire-tap suspects,
perhaps the most important tool in its armory.
The pressure on the KPK has
increased in direct proportion to its achievements in jailing a total of 547
politicians, bureaucrats and jurists since the commission was formed.
But for all of the claims that
the graft-fighting body is becoming too powerful, politicians can’t readily
argue with an almost 100% conviction rate, a consistent 80% approval rating and
an average of 7,000 corruption tip-offs a year to its 24-hour secure hotline.
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