JP/20/people
checked -- JSR Reluctant corruption 'czar' warms to his job
Eva C. Komandjaja The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
"This is not my dream; I don't really want to be in this position if you'd like to know what I really think."
These were Hendarman Supandji's own words when he was asked about how he felt being named as the new deputy attorney general for special crimes at the Attorney General's Office (AGO).
His reply was unexpected, as most people would envy his job since it is high-profile and commands a great deal of respect, which confers on its holder considerable power within the bureaucracy.
However, he felt the opposite; the first words he said in reply to Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh were, "Why was I elected to such a demanding position. Have you chosen the right person?"
For him, being a prosecutor was a job -- not his real calling in life -- adding that he was already happy with his old position as secretary to the deputy attorney general for supervision.
"I thought my new position would be at the supervision department since that was what was stated in the previous presidential decree signed by former president Megawati, but it turned out the attorney general wanted me for this position instead," he said.
Even though Hendarman thought the attorney general had made a mistake, he appeared to be handling well the large-scale, alleged lending scam at giant state-owned Bank Mandiri, only three weeks after his appointment.
The AGO took less than a month to name suspects in the US$1.28 billion banking scandal and many people praised Hendarman's hard work in his new position.
He realized that many people had put faith in him to take on unresolved cases at the AGO due to public demand to see justice done: Injustices had gone on in this country for so long, with guilty people walking free or fleeing abroad.
"I know that Pak Anwar (Supreme Audit Agency chief Anwar Nasution) has invested high hopes in me to solve the Bank Mandiri case; I will do the best I can but that will not be easy as one of our problems is lack of good human resources. However, I will not use that as an excuse," he said.
Hendarman was recently appointed head of the interdepartmental anticorruption team by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, meaning that he has been entrusted to undertake the country's major mission of eradicating corruption.
With a clean track record and a humble, honest personality, Hendarman might well be regarded as the right person among all the possible candidates to take on the huge task.
"I have kept my promise to the President that I won't stop fighting corruption and won't compromise on any kind of criminality. I don't offer any special 'access' that people might enjoy," he said when receiving The Jakarta Post for an interview at his office.
Born in Klaten, a small town in Central Java, 58 years ago, Hendarman said that since the beginning he did not want to become a prosecutor, preferring to be a military officer instead.
"My parents encouraged me to take a degree in law since back then the situation was chaotic and nobody really enforced the law. Besides, none of their sons and daughters had a law degree, either, so they pushed me instead," Hendarman said.
As a result of his parents' wishes he abandoned his mechanical engineering studies at Brawijaya University, Malang, East Java, to start studying law at Diponegoro University, Semarang, Central Java.
He began his career at the tender age of 25 in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, and was later assigned to the Central Jakarta Prosecutor's Office for three years before moving to the Intelligence Operation Center at the AGO.
"I wanted to quit this job so much several years ago but my parents and teacher kept on pressing me to continue, saying that it would be the best for me; looking at myself now I think they were right but this was not the kind of job I really wanted when I was young," he said.
In 1984 he was assigned to the drug department of the fraud division (Botasupal) of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) for only a year before returning to the AGO as head of investigation for the deputy attorney general for intelligence.
He later added that he preferred more the teaching and development aspects and that he despised anything to do with interrogating people since he had experienced that when he worked at the Central Jakarta Prosecutors Office in 1979 to 1981.
However, since he did not have any other option at that time he simply made the best of his assignment.
In 1990 he moved to Bangkok, Thailand, to fill a new position as prosecutor attache to the Indonesian Embassy in Thailand for five years. He later returned to the AGO and worked in his dream job as a teacher at the AGO training center before becoming a chief prosecutor in Yogyakarta in 2002.
Two years later he was appointed to his previous position as secretary to the deputy attorney general for supervision.
Although he still did not like the job, he conceded that he had an aptitude for analyzing cases, especially those concerning corruption, and that he started to feel more comfortable in his new position.
"I can take a quick look at a case and see what is the main problem and how we might resolve it," Hendarman said.
Even so, he said that he would take the position for only 18 months as he was 58 already and would have to retire soon.
"It's the best arrangement for me -- I don't think I would agree if anybody asked me to continue in this position. For me, the position is nothing but a piece of paper, a presidential decree -- that's all," he said.