Inequality before the law

Inequality before the law

President Abdurrahman Wahid has made a complete mockery of the
country's legal process by ordering the Attorney General's Office
to delay the prosecution of three prominent tycoons on account of
their supposedly huge contribution to exports, and hence to the
process of Indonesia's economic recovery.

We have long sensed something amiss in the failure to bring to
trial the many businesspeople who through their misdeeds brought
the country to its present state of near bankruptcy. We assumed
the problem was in finding evidence against these businesspeople
that would stand up in court. The President's startling
disclosure, made in Seoul on Thursday, confirmed lingering
suspicions of not only a lack of political will to prosecute
these businesspeople, but also of a deliberate policy to delay
prosecution, a policy that comes from the very top.

President Abdurrahman could not have dropped a worse bombshell
to mark the first anniversary of his administration, which fell
on Friday. His instruction to delay the prosecution amounted to
an unwarranted intervention in the judicial process. We leave it
to constitutional law experts to determine whether his behavior
amounts to an impeachable offense, but he has surely given an
additional potent bullet to his opponents in the House of
Representatives who are bent on bringing down his administration.

The country's legal system, when it comes to trying large
corruptors, is already cumbersome and frustratingly slow without
presidential intervention. This is especially true for the big
debtors who forced the government to turn to the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) for money to bailout their businesses, which
collapsed in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis. To this date,
not one of them has been tried, let alone convicted, for misdeeds
and the mismanagement of their companies, going back to the
1990s.

The government's failure to prosecute these people, and now
the President's disclosure, has sent the message that when it
comes to the law, some people in this country are more equal than
others. People have been convicted for petty theft, but
conglomerates receive impunity for grand theft.

That the President should single out three businessmen --
Texmaco Group chairman Marimutu Sinivasan, Barito Pacific Group
chairman Prajogo Pangestu and the chairman of the Gadjah Tunggal
Group, Syamsul Nursalim -- further indicates that he is playing
favorites when applying the law.

Using the President's logic that they should be spared
prosecution because of their contributions to the country's
exports, the same privilege should be extended to the other
tycoons. He should even include Mohammad "Bob" Hasan and former
president Soeharto's son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra on the
list. The fact that only three have been selected for such
preferential treatment has sparked speculation about a new
cronyism developing in the presidential palace.

In any event, it is highly debatable whether the three, or any
of the other conglomerates for that matter, really make such a
large contribution to the economy that they should be immune
before the law. The economic crisis of the last three years has
shown that it is the small and medium-sized enterprises that
really helped sustain the economy, and are now leading the
recovery process.

It is these small and medium-sized enterprises which have made
the largest contribution to exports, and one would assume, to the
creation of new jobs. By the same logic, it is the small and
medium-sized enterprises, and not the big conglomerates, that
should receive government assistance.

The single biggest contribution the conglomerates have made to
this country, through their mismanagement and crony capitalism,
has been in bringing the country to bankruptcy and the present
state of economic crisis. They have contributed trillions and
trillions to the new national debt -- accumulated through new IMF
borrowings and the issuance of government bonds that were needed
to bail them out. Surely, there can be no more compelling reason
than this to speed up the legal process and bring these people to
court before they inflict further damage on the country.