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The year the KPK almost met its end
Jakarta Post - December 28, 2015
The year began with an open rift between the KPK and the National Police, triggered when the antigraft body named then chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as a bribery suspect.
The KPK accusation angered the police, who believed the move to be yet another insult, following on from the KPK's prosecution of high-ranking police generals, including Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo, former chief of the National Traffic Police Corps, for corruption and money laundering.
The KPK accusation also irked the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) as Budi was former adjutant of party matron Megawati Soekarnoputri while she served as the country's president.
Consequently, in what many saw as revenge for Budi's prosecution, the police pursued criminal charges against then KPK commissioners, chairman Abraham Samad and his deputies Bambang Widjojanto, Adnan Pandu Praja and Zulkarnaen – as well as several investigators.
To end the open battle between the two institutions, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo dropped Budi's nomination. He then appointed former KPK chairman and retired police general Taufiequrachman Ruki and two other new deputies to replace Abraham and Bambang.
In March, just days after his appointment, Ruki transferred Budi's case to the Attorney General's Office (AGO), which later handed the investigation over to the National Police to be dropped in the hope that harmony would be re-established between the KPK and the police.
As a result of the transfer, the National Police dropped all investigations against Adnan and Zulkarnaen as well as those against the KPK investigators that had handled the case against Budi. But they moved forward with the cases related to Abraham, Bambang and KPK senior investigator Novel Baswedan, who had earlier been charged in an assault case in Bengkulu.
Following on from this, during his 10 months leading the commission, Ruki further engaged in a series of controversial moves, playing hard stick to officers in the antigraft body while mending ties with the police institution.
He issued sanctions, ranging from reprimands to one-month suspensions, to 28 KPK officials who had criticized his decision to transfer Budi's case and had expressed their disappointment with regard to the decision via the satirical move of sending a food package to the KPK headquarters in Jakarta.
Then Ruki installed three active police members to occupy three important posts at the KPK between September and October. Ruki also supported the voices of KPK critics, including lawmakers seeking to limit the commission's authority through a revision of the KPK Law.
Under Ruki's leadership, a swift prosecution style cost the KPK its tradition of seeking harsher punishments for graft defendants and in several cases, despite the fact that charges allowed the KPK to seek maximum punishments for the sake of deterrence, prosecutors appeared lenient.
Between March and December, Ruki managed to finish and send to trial 33 of the total 36 cases left behind by Abraham's leadership.
In a bribery case, KPK prosecutors demanded a mere two-year prison sentence for former NasDem secretary-general Patrice Rio Capella despite the fact that the antigraft law allowed the KPK to seek a maximum of five years behind bars for the former House Commission III member. The sentence demand was the lowest in the KPK's history.
As the Jakarta Corruption Court could not hand down a tougher sentence than that demanded by KPK prosecutors, the panel of judges at the court sentenced Rio to one and half years.
The case had earlier implicated Attorney General M. Prasetyo, the AGO's director of investigations Maruli Hutagalung and the owner of the Media group that runs MetroTV and Media Indonesia, NasDem party chairman Surya Paloh. To date, the KPK has failed to summons Prasetyo and Maruli.
Despite a wealth of criticism, Ruki did receive applause from antigraft campaigners for conducting five separate sting operations within six months between April and November. However, he was also strongly criticized for releasing without charge those police officers who had been arrested during the course of investigations in spite of allegations that they had acted as middlemen in bribery cases.
The antigraft body let Brig. Agung Krisdianto off the hook in April after he had been arrested for delivering bribe money from a businessman to the ruling PDI-P politician Adriansyah in April. The KPK also released two police members who had been arrested along with House lawmaker Dewi Yasin Limpo in a sting operation in October.
Under Abraham's tenure, all middlemen arrested in sting operations were sent to court to undergo a hearing, found guilty and convicted in their respective cases.
In mid-December, House Commission III elected five new KPK leaders for the 2015-2019 period, each promising stronger coordination and supervision with the AGO and the National Police. Ahead lies a grim outlook as the new leaders have yet to show any commitment to prosecuting corruption.
The newly installed KPK chairman has said that he would leave it to the lawmakers and the government should they want to revise the KPK Law and deputy chairman Saut Situmorang has said that prosecuting big cases like Bank Century is a waste of time and resources.
It would not be too far-fetched to presume that the commission may soon deteriorate into a prosecution coma. If the government is truly committed to the corruption fight, this is the time to prove it.
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/12/28/the-year-kpk-almost-met-its-end.html.
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