House urged to do spring cleaning, starting with Akbar

House urged to do spring cleaning, starting with Akbar

Muhammad Nafik
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Apart from completing the delayed deliberations of numerous draft
laws as its priority agenda, the House of Representatives should
no longer shun the widespread demands for a graft inquiry into
its own Speaker Akbar Tandjung, say observers.

The observers were speaking separately to The Jakarta Post
here on Saturday as the House was scheduled to end its month-long
recess and commence on Monday.

The debate over the need to establish a special committee to
look into Akbar, locally known by its acronym as Pansus, is
expected to be on offer later this month.

"The establishment of Pansus on Akbar is extremely crucial to
know the evil scenario behind this scandal," J. Kristiadi said,
referring to the Akbar's current status as a defendant in a major
corruption trial.

He argued that not only did the discrepancies, which surfaced
during the trials implicate Akbar, but that he was also trying to
"fool the public, and insulting our common sense".

"And this should therefore be uncovered further by setting up
the inquiry committee," Kristiadi added.

He said the committee would be able to "clarify the goings-on
that have been covered up" in the trials.

Akbar, also chairman of the Golkar Party -- which is the
second largest faction in the House -- is on trial facing charges
of misuse of Rp 40 billion funds from the State Logistics Agency
(Bulog), when he served as minister/state secretary in former
president B.J. Habibie's Cabinet in 1999.

He and other suspects in the same case had claimed the funds
were disbursed to provide food aid packages for the needy.

But public lies surfaced later when two suspects, businessman
Winfried Simatupang and chairman of the Islamic Raudlatul Jannah
Foundation Dadang Sukandar, confessed that the funds had not been
spent on the project.

With the discrepancies emerging in the court, Kristiadi
further said he was convinced that Akbar would no longer be able
to avoid conviction.

"It's seems very difficult now for Akbar to escape this one.
He has only two choices -- to save himself or Golkar," added the
political scientist from the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS).

Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, criminologist of the University of
Indonesia, was of a similar view that the establishment of Pansus
to investigate Akbar should remain on the top of the House's
agenda as the court proceedings were still "unpredictable".

However, she underlined that the proposed House investigation
should not affect the ongoing trial for the scandal, widely
dubbed as "Buloggate II".

She instead said that what should be treated as the top
priority for the legislature was to speed up the deliberation of
a number of bills needed to be endorsed as soon as possible.

Of 22 bills listed for priority in the last sitting period,
only two were endorsed while twenty others were delayed, to be
deliberated upon in the upcoming session.

Concurring with Harkristuti and Kristiadi was constitutional
law expert Satya Arinanto, also from the University of Indonesia.
He urged the legislature to continue to pursue the previously-
omitted debates on the need to examine the Bulog scandal.

He argued that the political and legal measures against Akbar
should be undertaken simultaneously so as to further unravel the
clandestine scenario in the scandal.

The three experts also agreed on urging the House and the
government to prioritize the deliberations of three political
bills, which were still being held at the Ministry of Home
Affairs for unclear reasons.

The government was scheduled to submit the antiterrorism bill
in June to show its commitment to fighting the war on terror.