Gen. Chaeruddin appointed as caretaker police chief
JAKARTA (JP): After adding a fourth star to his rank, President Abdurrahman Wahid proceeded to install Gen. Chaeruddin Ismail as interim National Police chief at the State Palace on Friday.
Claiming that he had secured the prior approval of House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung, Abdurrahman installed Chaeruddin, following the dismissal of National Police chief Gen. Surojo Bimantoro.
"This appointment was decided based on an agreement between the President and the House speaker," the President said in his brief introductory remarks.
Abdurrahman expressed his confidence that he would be able to win the approval of the House to install Chaeruddin as National Police chief before the country's Independence Day on Aug. 17.
On Friday afternoon, Akbar implied that he had approved the President's decision on Chaeruddin.
However, later in the evening, Akbar called a media conference and denied that he had given his approval to the President's installation of Chaeruddin as caretaker National Police chief.
Akbar acknowledged he had had a discussion by telephone with the President, in which Akbar told him that the House could not give its approval to the installation of Chaeruddin as new police chief.
"It's not true that I conveyed my approval of the installation of Chaeruddin as police chief. The House cannot take any official stance on this," Akbar said on Friday night.
The installation of Chaeruddin prompted leaders of the People's Consultative Assembly, the country's highest legislative body, to hold a meeting in the evening and decide to convene a plenary session on Saturday in order to decide whether to hasten the special session.
Abdurrahman did not swear in Chaeruddin in Friday's ceremony. He only delivered a short speech after Military Secretary Vice Marshal Budhy Santoso read out Presidential Decrees No. 56 and No. 57 on the promotion of Chaeruddin to a four-star general, and his appointment to the new position of caretaker police chief.
After the ceremony, Chaeruddin said, "I am ready to accept this position, as a Bhayangkara soldier, and prepared to carry out measures ordered out by the President."
Unlike the situation in the Indonesian Military, the rank of general at the National Police Headquarters is one that is held solely by the National Police chief.
Chaeruddin was turned from commissioner general to general in less than two months, following his appointment as National Police deputy chief on June 2.
He therefore holds two positions concurrently, that of caretaker National Police chief and National Police deputy chief.
According to the formal invitation sent by the President's Office to high-ranking officials including Cabinet Secretary Marzuki Darusman, the President was scheduled to install Chaeruddin as National Police chief.
After meeting with Chaeruddin at his office before the official ceremony, Budhy said the swearing-in ceremony had been canceled, but the President decided to promote Chaeruddin to the rank of general.
A National Police top official who requested anonymity said that most police generals had not expected Chaeruddin, a 1971 graduate of the Police Academy, to accept the post, but he did.
At 3 p.m. on Friday, Bimantoro's belongings and personal furniture were being moved out of his official residence at Jl. Pattimura No. 37 in South Jakarta, and loaded into a parked police truck outside the tightly-guarded official residence.
Brimob Police officers guarding the house said that Bimantoro's belongings, which included among other things a mattress, pillows, Dutch pillows, cupboards and a computer, were to be driven to Bimantoro's private home in the Cibubur Asri residential complex, East Jakarta.
A top police alert was declared solely within the National Police Headquarters as of 4:40 p.m. on Friday and police officers and officials were formally forbidden to leave the compound of the National Police Headquarters.
Some 1,000 officers of the National Police elite Mobile Brigade (Brimob) forces were called in and deployed in the compound of the Headquarters. (ylt/prb/dja)