Time For SBY To Step Up To The Plate...

The Fact Finding Team appointed by the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or SBY, has held a press conference to relay their findings and what they intend to put in writing to the president. It is worth noting that the fact finding team, or the Team of Eight as it is known, have no real powers to stop the investigations by the police or the Office of the Attorney General (AGO).

Nevertheless, considering that SBY went to the trouble of appointing the team means that if he does not follow through on what the team finds, then he will look like he is dragging his feet and this can only be a negative in the long-term for the president and his legacy.

The fact finding team has reported that the police and the AGO do not have a case against Chandra and Bibit. The evidence that they offered up to the team as proof of the case has been deemed inadequate. It has been deemed to be insufficient to sustain the indictment and it has been deemed to not be sufficient to get a conviction. This is a pretty big slap in the face for both the police and the AGO.

It is worth noting that this is also a pretty big slap in the face for the president as well. He steadfastly refused to become involved and his reluctance to do so has shown him to be weak on ant-corruption measures and willing to do whatever it takes to avoid making the hard decisions and upsetting the apple cart. The failures in this case will continue to haunt SBY for some time. They might also be instrumental in undermining any legacy that he thought he might be leaving with respect to being a reformer and corruption fighter.

What the interim report does put into play now is how should those who remain be dealt with. This is particularly so for the lead actor in this charade, Anggodo. Anggodo by his own admission has seemingly said he was trying to bribe members of the KPK and had disbursed money for that purpose. If there is no evidence, and the fact finding team says that there is not, then Anggodo must be charged with obstruction of justice type violations and making an attempt to bribe members of the KPK.

Furthermore, the Chief of Police and the Attorney General must also be investigated to determine what they knew and when. It seems that both were either involved in the construction of the case against Chandra and Bibit or were aware early that it was a fabrication. Both men have fronted the relevant Commission at the DPR and claimed that there is evidence of the extortion and bribes being completed, In essence, they have suggested that both the police and the AGO intend to pursue the matter to its conclusion.

The only way that either can avoid the pink slip treatment is to prove that to all intents and purposes they were "just doing their jobs". Somehow this seems unlikely.

It appears that round three, four, and five have gone to the KPK as well. The police and the AGO are taking a beating in not only the courts of law but the court of public opinion as well.

Time to give this one up.

Smells Like Bullshit...

Here is a little gem from the Indonesian Attorney General. This was offered to Commission III at the Indonesian House of Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat / DPR), as reported by The Jakarta Post:

“There is no evidence of bribery. But there is other proof to lead us to conclude the violation took place, although we have no adequate evidence of the acceptance of bribes.”

This is clearly double-speak nonsense. Two parts of the quote state that there is not only no evidence but what they have is inadequate. This is then moderated by there is proof that the violation, in this case bribery and extortion, took place.

Now, if this is what the Attorney General intends to proceed to trial on, then he really must start packing his bags and cleaning out his office.

The president has no choice but to intervene. The AG must be dismissed and replaced by someone who has a better understanding of what the law requires for an indictment to be made and a trial to be undertaken. Simply, the "proof" that the AG is referring to is clearly the recanted testimony of a number of suspects and witnesses. The fact that the proof has been recanted suggests that the prospects for success at trial would be somewhere between nothing and a snowflake's chance in hell.

It is way past time for the police and the AGO to give this one up.

No apologies for the title of this post or the picture.

Bye Bye Chief of Police, Bye Bye Chief of Detectives...

The game might very well be up for both the Chief of Police, Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri, and the Chief of Detectives, Comr. Gen. Susno Duaji. That game being their employment in their current positions. Any attempt to maintain them by the president will be a mortal wound for the president as both the Chiefs are tainted beyond salvation. In essence, the president himself signed off on the pink slips when he created the fact-finding team, and then tasked that team with uncovering the truth.

There remain questions of independence considering the president appointed a team to uncover the mentioning of his name in a some wire-tapped conversations. However, the fact-finding team was always going to find that there was no evidence against Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Rianto because there was none to start with.

Indonesian law in its current form would not sustain the trumped-up criminalization of authority charges, and the alleged corruption has to-date not been proved. In fact, there is not even enough in police hands at the moment to even formulate the charge.

The fact finding team is supposedly going to send an interim report to the president that states that there is not enough evidence to proceed against Chandra and Bibit, either on the current charge or the alleged corruption. The president can no longer sit back and say that he is going to let this charade run its legal course. That course is done. The charges against Chandra and Bibit must be dropped and they must be reinstated immediately to their positions as Commissioners on the Corruption Eradication Commission.

This farce has already damaged the president, and any feet-dragging on his part once the fact finding team reports will only further damage his credibility as a corruption fighter.

If the president is worth his salt, then the Chief of Police will resign, or be dismissed, within 24 hours of the fact finding team's report (assuming that they report that there is not enough evidence to proceed). Quite simply, the Chief of Police used a Parliamentary Commission to state publicly that the police had enough evidence to proceed against Chandra on the corruption allegations. This would seem to be a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.

In simple terms, the Chief of Police lied, and he seemingly has misled and lied to the parliament about the state of the police investigation into the allegations.

Furthermore, the Chief of Detectives must also resign or be dismissed. After all this was his own personal vendetta or war against the KPK, and he has been found wanting in the honesty and integrity department. This is in spite of any claims he may have made as God is his witness that he never received any bribes. Whether he did or did not is irrelevant. His pursuit of Chandra and Bibit was a clear abuse of power on his part, and that in itself is sufficient for him to fall on his own sword and resign. If he does not have the desire or courage to fall on his sword, then the president needs to ensure that the man is dismissed from his position.

Once the president has taken the opportunity to clear out the dead wood from the police force, he must then turn his attention to the Office of the Attorney General (AGO). Heads will also need to roll there. And, those heads must continue to roll until a new Attorney General is appointed. Best case scenario for the next AG is that it is a lawyer of good standing and a clean reputation. It cannot be an internal promotion from within the ranks of the AGO as the AGO has shown that as an institution it is tainted with corruption.

The reality is that an outsider with a mandate and the support of the president will have a foot up in terms of cleaning house and setting the AGO on the path of real reform.

This would seemingly be the perfect opportunity for the president to clean house, and start fulfilling the promise of corruption eradication, clean governance, and a brighter future free from institutionalized corruption for all Indonesians.

Postscript...

I should add that the Deputy Attorney General, Abdul Hakim Ritonga, and the Chief of Detectives, Comr. Gen. Susno Duaji, have tendered resignations.

Appeal Denied -- What's Next?

It seems that the three cowards, AKA Amrozi, Samudra, and Mukhlas (photo courtesy of Reuters) have been thwarted once again, this time by the Constitutional Court. It seems that the Constitutional Court has adopted a position that says the whole point of the death penalty is to see the convicted person dead. In other words death sometimes hurts and in death penalty cases the method of execution may cause pain but this pain does not constitute torture and as such the method cannot be deemed to be cruel and unusual.

Therefore, the firing squad does not constitute a method of execution that is either cruel or unusual or, for that matter, inhuman. The Constitutional Court seems to concede that pain might be involved but that the pain is not enough to warrant any Court intervention in this matter. It is worth noting that even if the Court had found the firing squad to be cruel and unusual, these three would not have benefited as Constitutional Court decisions apply going forward and not retrospectively.

This means that there appears to be no further reasons for the delay of the executions. It is expected that the Attorney General, Hendarman Supandji, will announce the date and time of the executions on Friday. Executions are not normally announced prior to the execution taking place. I guess interest in the case is such that the government feels a pre-announcement is warranted.

Next update on Friday (unless there is something worth noting beforehand).

State Sanctioned Killing

Indonesia will execute two Nigerians later tonight. Although this is more likely to be in the wee hours of Friday morning as executions normally take place around 2am for some reason. This must be a reminder to all those contemplating smuggling drugs; it simply is not worth your life!

Maybe the Attorney General, Hendarman Supandji, has decided to execute a few people in the hope of taking the heat off of himself and an ongoing corruption scandal which is more than likely see him removed as the revelations of involvement keep moving on up the food chain at the Office of the Attorney General.

However, the reasons aside for the first executions of drug traffickers since 2004, it must not be forgotten that these two individuals smuggled drugs, were caught, tried and convicted in a court of law, and will soon pay the ultimate price for their stupidity.

The National Police Chief, General Sutanto, has also gone on the record to say that the executions should act as a deterrent. Nevertheless, they won't there is no sustainable evidence to suggest that the risk of death is a deterrent to the smuggling of drugs. Some people are just so desperate that no matter what the risk is they will still try and smuggle drugs.

Hansen Anthony Nwaolisa was caught trafficking 600g heroin in 43 capsules from Pakistan in January 2001. Samuel Iwachekawu Okoye was caught with 3.8kg of heroin in his luggage after arriving from India in January 2001.

Both men were sentenced to death in mid-2001 and their final appeals for clemency were rejected in July 2004. They are currently in special holding cells at the Nusakambangan Prison in Central Java.

According to Amnesty International, "Experts in international law, including the top UN officials, have confirmed that applying the death penalty for drug-related offences is a breach of international law".

The latest figures state that there are almost 60 people on death row in Indonesia for drug related offences and of these almost half are foreigners.

Corruption In The Office of the Attorney General -- Indonesia

The politicians of this vast land have decided to weigh in on the corruption debate that afflicts the Office of the Attorney General. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does very much seem to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black!

There is no doubt that the Office of the Attorney General has serious corruption problems. The most recent case is testament to that fact. It is also testament to the fallacy of the claims made by the current Attorney General, Hendarman Supandji, that he was going to clean up the image of the Office and make it corruption free. This is a fallacy because some of the Attorney General's own appointments are implicated in serious corruption.

Nevertheless, despite the title of this post and the above paragraph. Perhaps rather than singling out the Attorney General on corruption there is a need for the House of Representatives or the DPR to be a little more introspective and clean up their own backyard first. With a general election coming up in 2009 there are already rumblings of money politics being heard around the traps. It is expected that the "fees" required to get on some tickets is going to increase this cycle. This means that there is still a belief in some circles that a ticket to Senayan is a ticket to the big pay day and a life lived in the lap of luxury.

As I said, the Office of the Attorney General needs to clean house, no doubt about it. But if we are going to talk about cleaning house then it needs to be across the board. The DPR needs to get their collective heads out of the sand and the individual parties must take a "real" stand against corruption rather than just pay continual lip service to an ideal for which they do not really aspire.

If you play with fire for long enough eventually you will get burned!

An FPI Update

Well, maybe I was a little premature with my comments (then again maybe not -- we will see) about the government not having the testicular fortitude to go after the FPI. However, as they say the proof of the pudding is in the eating and not in the baking.

It appears the Coordinating Minister of Politics, Law, and Security Affairs, Widodo Adi Sucipto, is looking at freezing the activities of the FPI through the application of a 1985 law. This law is the Law on Community Organizations (Law No. 8 of 1985). The Law is set for review by the Parliament and a draft bill is currently being prepared.

It is one thing to pay lip service to the idea of upping the ante on the FPI, it is another thing altogether to take concrete steps towards forcefully changing these thug's attitudes through the strict application of the prevailing laws and regulations. The Attorney General of the Republic of Indonesia, Hendarman Supandji, has been quick to jump in and say that it is not going to be as easy as just suspending the FPI. There are processes to be followed, such as issuing warnings or reprimands instructing them not to persist in their errant ways of violence and mayhem.

My understanding is that once a reprimand or warning has been issued the FPI would then have to perpetrate some further violence in breach of the reprimand. Then the government would have to go to the Supreme Court and seek an order to suspend the FPI. However, it would not be long after the reprimand before the FPI breached the provisions of the reprimand.

The leader of FPI, Habib Rizieq Shihab (photo courtesy of Kompas), has gone on the record with this:

"We will never allow for the arrest of a single member of our force before the government dissolves Ahmadiyah. We will fight to our last drop of blood."

So, it would be a little naive to think that the FPI will be changing their violent ways anytime soon!

The ball is clearly in the government's court...