Government under pressure to follow up 'Time' report
JAKARTA (JP): The pressure increased on Tuesday for President B.J. Habibie's administration to follow up on Time magazine's report on the alleged corruption of former president Soeharto and his family and start a serious investigation of its own.
National Mandate Party (PAN) chairman Amien Rais, Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) executives Teten Masduki and Bambang Widjojanto, and even Golkar Party chairman Akbar Tandjung urged the government, particularly Attorney General Andi M. Ghalib, to immediately conduct an in-depth investigation on the report published recently in the globally circulated weekly.
They all expressed the belief that the front page story titled "Soeharto Inc.", which ran into 14 pages in the latest edition of the New York-based magazine, was trustworthy and reliable.
"Therefore, if any of Soeharto's lawyers say that the report is just for fun, I think even the chicken will giggle," Amien told reporters in the West Java capital of Bandung. He was referring to a chicken jokingly presented to the attorney general last year by students, and a recent report of Soeharto laughing in reaction to Amien's earlier comments.
He said he would do his best to meet Habibie to ask him to conduct a real follow-up on the report.
"For such a crystal-clear case like this one, I will no longer need to meet the attorney general to ask for a follow-up. I'll try amid my bustling schedule to meet Habibie," Amien told participants of the Bandung Journalists Discussion Forum.
But he asked that Ghalib's office be pro-active in digging out more information from the report before lodging the case with the court.
"I personally don't have a grievance with Pak Harto, but the people are waiting for the legal progress of this case. So name him (Soeharto) a suspect, impose house arrest on him, and bring him to court. That's all," Amien said.
In its report, Time claimed that the Soeharto family fortune, amassed during the authoritarian leader's 32-year rule, was currently worth US$15 billion.
The amount included $9 billion in cash that was transferred from a bank in Switzerland to another, presumably safer, bank in Austria shortly after Soeharto was forced from office on May 21, 1998, the report said.
According to Akbar, Ghalib's office should not ignore the report.
"The Attorney General's Office should respond to the story seriously," the former state secretary in Habibie's cabinet was quoted by Antara as saying.
"If we don't believe the story, perhaps we should take other steps," Akbar said, without elaborating.
In a statement made available to The Jakarta Post, Teten and Bambang of ICW insisted that the report was not a subject to be debated, but that Ghalib should give a concrete response by immediately checking the claims with Soeharto.
ICW said that if the government was still reluctant to conduct a corruption investigation, the House of Representatives (DPR) should ask Habibie to dismiss Ghalib from his current post.
Separately, head of the United Development Party (PPP) faction at the House, Zarkasih Nur, said his party would invite the editor-in-chief of the magazine to give details of the report on Soeharto's wealth to the House.
"We'll send an invitation to the editor-in-chief of Time magazine in New York. We hope that they will accept our invitation," Zarkasih said.
The report, which the magazine claimed was based on an intensive four-month investigation, has immediately become a top story for almost all print and broadcast media across the country.
According to Amien, certain parties have blocked the distribution of the magazine in the country.
"It's not easy to find the Time edition here. I got copies of the report faxed by a friend of mine abroad," Amien said, displaying the copies.
Many subscribers had not yet received their copies on Tuesday, when the magazine usually arrives. (emf/43)