Plot or justice?

It took months of listening to testimonies filled with falsehood and deception. But on Thursday, finally, the Central Jakarta District Court came out with a verdict that is likely to leave the case as controversial as it was. In a judgment that took more than eight hours to read out, the Central Jakarta District Court pronounced Akbar Tandjung, our debonair House of Representatives Speaker and chairman of the once ruling Golkar Party, guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt of corruption. The court sentenced him to three years in prison, but he is free pending a decision by the court of appeals. His two codefendants in the case, Dadang Sukandar and Winfried Simatupang, got away with 18 months in prison.

The three defendants received a lenient verdict considering that the maximum penalty for corruption is 20 years. But with the demise of morals in practically all fields of public life in this country in the late 1950s, our judiciary is known for getting cold feet when it comes to meting out justice on the powerful. And after all, the money -- all the Rp 40 billion -- had been duly, if mysteriously, returned by Simatupang, who in an earlier testimony swore he had used it to buy emergency supplies to assist the needy. The money, Simatupang told the court in an earlier testimony, had somehow been found, intact, stashed away among his belongings. Oddly, the court never bothered to investigate where the cash came from.

In any case, with hundreds of protesters for and against Akbar clashing outside the improvised court hall, the council of judges said Akbar, as minister/state secretary in 1999, together with two codefendants Dadang Sukandar and Winfried Simatupang, had been proven guilty, "legitimately and convincingly", of misusing Rp 40 billion in non-budgetary funds of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).

The three, the court said, had willfully inflicted losses on the state, impeded national development, caused harm to the poor, made use of an Islamic foundation to carry out their crime and damaged the government's credibility. Oddly, there was no mention of Akbar's having abused his authority as minister and state secretary at the time the crime was committed. Neither did they pursue what precisely had happened to the money, after it was first "spent" and then "found" again.

Given the high-profile nature of Akbar's graft case and the logic-defying twists and turns that it took during the court hearings, it is only to be expected that in spite of the time and effort that it took for the court to come to a verdict, the whole procedure remains suspect in the eyes of many observers.

According to Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) director Hendardi, it shows that the law enforcers are not serious in eradicating corruption. And according to Indonesian Corruption Watch chairman Teten Masduki the lenient sentence was part of a political compromise between President Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and Akbar's Golkar party. Many even suspect the existence of a plot to eventually set Akbar free.

Given the circumstances, it is difficult not to draw a parallel between Akbar's case and that of central bank governor Sjahril Sabirin, who was found guilty of corruption by a Jakarta district court, but who was only recently absolved by the Jakarta High Court of all charges. In all this the government, through Minister of Justice Yusril Ihza Mahendra, maintains it respects the independence of the judiciary and will therefore not interfere in judicial procedures.

Since nobody doubts the minister's integrity, that may well be true. Nevertheless, it seems that a lot of work still remains to be done in order to restore public trust in the judiciary. Obviously, this is a crucial goal to achieve, for within it hangs the evolution of what could perhaps be called the Indonesian dream -- which is the attainment of a just and prosperous society.

In this very context it is unfortunate indeed that the case of the state against Akbar Tandjung should have been distorted by so many irregularities as to render the court's verdict suspect in the eyes of the public.