President urges attorney general to resign: Source

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja and Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Megawati Soekarnoputri summoned Attorney General M.A. Rachman for a second time in less than a week on Monday as pressure mounted on him to resign amid corruption allegations and for allegedly concealing his wealth.

A source close to the presidential inner circle told The Jakarta Post that during the discussion at Megawati's official residence on Jl. Teuku Umar early Monday, the President asked Rachman to resign to avoid tarnishing her administration's image.

The request could not be confirmed officially.

Separately, Vice President Hamzah Haz claimed to have no knowledge of the President's intentions for Rachman. He said a decision to dismiss Rachman was Megawati's prerogative.

"But Rachman should reflect on whether he will become a liability for the President ... he should have been thought about that," Hamzah said.

Rachman has been standing on shaky ground since last Tuesday when he failed to satisfy Public Servants' Wealth Audit Commission (KPKPN) investigators who queried him over discrepancies in his wealth report.

The commission have questioned the attorney general about his alleged ownership of a luxury house worth about Rp 5 billion (US$561,700) in the Graha Cinere housing complex in Depok, West Java.

Rachman said he bought the house in 1999 when he was the deputy attorney general for general crimes, but gave it to his daughter who later sold it to a businessman for far below its market price.

Rachman was also asked to clarify details of bank accounts opened between 1999 and 2001 which contained Rp 545.6 million and US$29,600. He said the money came from businesspeople from East Java who sought legal advice. He could not recall the businesspeople's names.

The attorney general was summoned by the President soon after leaving KPKPN headquarters.

The fight against corruption has been the country's number one battle since the 1998 reform movement which forced former ruler Soeharto to resign. However, Megawati has admitted that rampant graft in the bureaucracy and judiciary is hampering its eradication.

Rachman was appointed as attorney general last year to become the first career prosecutor to take up the post during the reform era.

J.E. Sahetapy, chairman of the government-backed Commission on National Law and a House of Representatives legislator, said Rachman's implication in graft only strengthened the public's distrust of the justice system, which he said was dominated by corrupt law enforcers.

He said the prosecutors' office should not be involved in the planned anticorruption commission as it had not shown it could handle corruption cases which had caused many billions of dollars of losses to the state.

"Why should the prosecutors' offices be involved in the commission's work? The prosecutors are tainted with corruption themselves," Sahetapy told the Post.

The establishment of the antigraft commission has hit a major snag in the House as the Indonesian Military/National Police faction continues to insist that police investigate corruption cases and prosecutors try them.

Separately, law reform campaigner Bambang Widjojanto of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) said the Attorney General's Office had been the government's political tool for decades which made it a closed institution free of whistle-blowers and public control.

Quoting a government audit report completed in April 2001 as part of the technical assistance project of the Asian Development Bank, Bambang said the office had two budgets, one of which was unofficial and funded by contributions from those seeking favorable court outcomes.

"The unofficial budget is disbursed to fund its operations ... the amount of which is probably larger than the public budget.

"Apparently the 'payments' made and received by the prosecutors to distort the course of justice, such as to destroy a case or evidence, to lower charges, to demand lenient sentences or to release a criminal after conviction," Bambang told the Post.

The report further stated that the organization's culture was militaristic, with sole control in the hands of the attorney general, including the disbursement of the budget and the prosecution plans.

Bambang said that to stop the illegal practices, an independent monitoring body or a center of coordination among law enforcement institutions was needed.