ORI candidate selection panel recommends permanent Ombudsman RI ethics council

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Selection Committee for the Candidate Members of the Ombudsman RI (ORI) for the 2026–2031 period recommended that the Ombudsman RI Ethics Council be established on a permanent basis, in order to prevent repetition of the cases experienced by the incumbent non-active Chair of the Ombudsman RI, Hery Susanto. The Chair of the ORI Candidate Member Selection Committee for 2026–2031, Prof. Erwan Agus Purwanto, said during the process that the selection committee can seek information about candidates from the ethics council that oversees ORI. ‘The solution could be to make the ethics council permanent, because for incumbent members, the selection committee could obtain clearance from the ethics council so that the incumbent candidate would not have problems in the future,’ said Prof. Erwan at the Open Inquiry session by the Ombudsman RI Ethics Council in Jakarta, Friday. Through a permanent ethics council that oversees ORI permanently, he argues, the track record of a candidate for ORI membership from incumbents can be more known from internal sources. Thus, he continued, the selection committee can obtain more accurate data as input for considerations in making decisions on the candidate members to be selected. ‘This might be one of the improvements to be made in the future in the election of ORI members for the 2031–2036 term,’ he said. The Ombudsman RI Ethics Council was formed to adjudicate Hery Susanto, as a tangible commitment by ORI in responding to the dynamics and following up on the legal case. The five members of the ethics council are, three external members including Prof. Bagir Manan, Prof. Jimly Asshiddiqie, and Prof. Siti Zuhro, and two internal ORI members including Maneger Nasution and Partono Samino. Earlier, the Attorney General’s Office (Kejagung) named Hery Susanto as a suspect in a case of alleged criminal acts related to the governance of nickel mining ventures from 2013-2025. ‘The designation of the suspect was made after investigators obtained sufficient evidence through a series of investigative actions, searches, and others,’ he said at the Jampidsus Building of the Kejagung, Jakarta, Thursday (16/4). In that case, Hery is alleged to have received a bribe amounting to Rp1.5 billion from PT TSHI, which began when PT TSHI faced issues with the calculation of non-tax state revenue (PNBP) by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (Kemenhut). Then, PT TSHI sought a way out through collusion with Hery Susanto, who was then an Ombudsman RI Commissioner. To carry out this, he said, Hery received some money from LKM, who was the Director of PT TSHI.