JAKARTA,Indonesia — Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has vowed to make the eradication of so-called ‘legal mafia’ a priority in the first 100 days of his new administration.
Source: The Straits Times
- His pledge came on the same day that two top law enforcers resigned after they were implicated in an alleged plot to undermine the country’s anti-corruption agency.
- Yudhoyono said that he was instituting legal reform to clean up the system and wipe out corruption because many people had fallen victim to unjust and illegal practices by corrupt law enforcement officers, lawyers and judges.
- “I urge the people of Indonesia, who feel like they have become victims of this mafia in the past, or perhaps even now have become victims, to report to us,” he said in his first public statement acknowledging the presence of such a mafia in key law enforcement agencies.
- He defined the mafia as “those who work as brokers to settle court cases, offering bribes and sale of court verdicts, threatening witnesses, and imposing illegal levies”.
- Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting, he added: “We can find this mafia in the police force, the judiciary, the Attorney-General’s Office, the KPK, customs and excise department and other government departments.”
- His statements followed a public outcry over the arrest of two top Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) officials and the disclosure on Tuesday, by way of wiretap testimony, of an apparent high-level conspiracy to undermine the anti-graft body. Those involved are said to include senior police officers, members of the Attorney-General’s Office and corruption suspects.
- The two men implicated in the alleged plot, police commissioner-general Susno Duadji and deputy attorney-general Abdul Hakim Ritonga yesterday handed in their letters, in a rare case of Indonesian officials stepping down voluntarily to take responsibility for wrongdoing.
- Said Yudhoyono, “Their suspension from their duties is vital to ensure that the investigation (into the scandal) and the gathering of testimonies can proceed smoothly.”
- Susno has been leading police efforts to go after the two KPK officials after he himself was accused by the anti-graft agency of abusing his power by allowing a businessman to withdraw US$18 million (RM61.6 million) from the troubled Bank Century last year.
- Ritonga was the prosecutor in charge of the case against the two KPK officials — deputy chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra Hamzah.
- Analysts welcomed the two resignations which, they said, would prevent the two officials from using their authority to block investigations by a fact-finding team appointed by the President.
- Saying that more needed to be done, they called for further reforms and a shake-up of the key law enforcement agencies, including the removal of the police chief, General Bambang Hendarso Danuri, and Attorney-General Hendar-man Supandji.
- “The President should take the opportunity to conduct a complete overhaul of the two institutions,” analyst Adnan Topan Husodo of the Jakarta-based Indonesia Corruption Watch told The Straits Times yesterday.
- “It is an open secret that the two institutions are graft-infested, with a mafia operating with impunity.”
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