Justice for sale

Justice for sale

The saga over the massive corruption case at Bank BNI has
taken a new turn this week with new allegations of bribery and
extortion between the suspects and their investigators. One would
have thought that since the return of the prime suspect Adrian
Waworuntu, after he had fled abroad, it should have sped up the
investigation and brought the case to a close once and for all.
Instead, the plot thickens.

Media Indonesia newspaper has, for the past few days, led its
front page with stories about behind-the-scenes negotiations
involving various players in the Rp 1.3 trillion loan scandal at
the state bank. Perhaps the most damaging allegation, as far as
the law enforcement agencies are concerned, came from Harris Is
Artono, one of the suspects, who said that he had been asked to
pay US$100,000 by a senior prosecutor to have the charges against
him either dropped or mitigated. Harris, who is due to be
sentenced soon for his part in the scandal, has nothing to lose
by going public with such allegations.

Media Indonesia carried another story which said that two
suspects also gave a check for Rp 5 billion ($550,000) to a top
police investigator, again in the hopes of having their charges
dropped.

But that check bounced, much to the chagrin of the red-faced
cop.

All the bribe and extortion allegations have been vehemently
denied by the people in question at the prosecutor's office and
the National Police. But both men are now under investigation by
their respective offices. Those who made the accusations will
have to be questioned, this time not as suspects but as witnesses
to help build the case, assuming there is one.

Does all this sound overly familiar? Perhaps. But it is not
because it is the stuff our soap operas are made of. It all
sounds so familiar because bribes and extortion have become very
much part of the system in this country. Corruption has intruded
into the political, economic, social and cultural system and
also, as the BNI case shows, the justice system. It is probably
so commonplace that no TV producer has ever bothered to take it
up as a central theme of sinetron.

Yet, it is a drama nevertheless, and a very tragic one
because, at least in real life, the villains seem to win all the
time. The victims in such a plot, usually ordinary taxpaying
folks who have to bear the brunt of the huge corruption costs,
are not part of the scenario anyway.

But nothing could be as tragic as when the very people whom we
have entrusted to lead the campaign against corruption are
themselves corrupt. Sadly, it has long been an open secret that
in this country, justice is for sale. The scandal surrounding the
investigation of the BNI corruption case, whether true or not, is
a sad reminder of the state of things with respect to our law.

Certainly, there have been many times when corruption cases
crashed and burned before the final court judgment was
pronounced. They can crash at a variety of points along the legal
process; during the police investigation, at the prosecutors'
office or during the trials. The huge inconsistencies in the
sentences passed, or in the treatments given to the suspects in
the BNI loan scandal are indications that many forces other than
the quest for justice are at play.

Would it not be nice if, from time to time, such a saga came
to a happy end for the public -- where justice was truly served.
By the looks of it however, the drama surrounding the BNI
corruption case is going to go on for some time. All we can do is
sit back and watch, or switch to another more entertaining
channel and come back from time to time. Like most sinetron
dramas, the plot in corruption dramas moves slowly, if at all.