President urges attorney general to resign: Source

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.