AGO's failures in graft war raise doubts as to commitment
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Many people have serious doubts, to say the least, about the commitment of the Attorney General's Office (AGO) to fighting the country's out-of-control corruption.
These doubts will only have been reinforced by the latest debacle in the flagging war against graft, this time involving big-time corruptor Samadikun Hartono.
The case, which has been making headlines for the past few weeks, started after the Supreme Court sentenced Samadikun in May to four years behind bars for embezzling Rp 1.7 trillion (US$200 million) in Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support (BLBI) funds.
Claiming they had yet to obtain a copy of the verdict, prosecutors remained reluctant to execute the verdict directly throughout June.
Inexplicably, it was only in early July that prosecutors finally started to work on executing the verdict. Unlike in the case of run-of-the-mill street criminals, where the execution of verdicts is often marked by heavy-handedness and violence, the prosecutors instead chose to treat Samadikun with kid gloves, sending him a letter politely asking him to show up in the Central Jakarta District Court for execution of the verdict, if he did not mind.
Samadikun, however, did mind, and failed to turn up for his appointment with the jailers.
A full one week later, the seemingly unperturbed prosecutors finally announced that they would use force to put Samadikun behind bars. Accompanied by security officers, prosecutors came to Samadikun's house in Menteng, Central Jakarta, only to find it empty.
The wily Samadikun had absconded, just as many predicted he would.
Samadikun is only one of many convicted pillagers and plunderers who have managed to escape their just deserts. Earlier this year, prosecutors also failed to jail convicted corruptor Setiawan Harjono, who was sentenced to five years for the misuse of Rp 550 billion ($67 million) in BLBI funds. Another big-time corruptor, David Nusa Wijaya, who should have counted himself miraculously blessed to only get a measly one year in jail for BLBI graft involving Rp 1.27 trillion, also managed, or was permitted, to abscond this year before judgment could be served on him -- whereabouts currently unknown.
The Attorney General's Office has never once apologized for its failure to execute court verdicts and put the bloodsuckers where they belong.
Achmad Ali, a professor with the Hasanuddin University law school, said that the excuses trotted forth by prosecutors for not directly serving court verdicts on corruptors was proof positive of the half-hearted commitment to law enforcement in this country, and how the law could be hijacked by those with money.
He criticized law enforcers for being "too legalistic" as they persistently hid behind legal procedures, instead of adhering to the substance of the law.
"Law enforcers mistakenly think that legal certainty means adhering to the legislative provisions blindly," Ali said, adding that law enforcers could easily manipulate poorly worded and drafted legislation in the interests of their probable benefactors: the corruptors.
The law, he asserted, is not the same as legislation because law enforcement without morality is merely "law enforcement without soul."
Ali once again pointed out what the public is all too well aware of: a legal institution can never produce justice if it is led by officials who are up to their necks in corruption themselves.
"A dirty broom won't make the floor clean. In fact, it will make it even dirtier," he remarked.