The fall guy for the mighty who've fallen

JAKARTA (JP): Last week I did not commemorate the victory of the Pancasila state ideology over the antigovernment coup plotters, who in 1965 helped put the then Gen. Soeharto into the country's saddle of power. However, I did spend my idle time on another important matter.

I tried to ponder the fate of the smiling general's smiling youngest son, Hutomo Mandala Putra, or Tommy. I sincerely felt sympathy for the business baron because the Supreme Court sentenced him to 18 months in jail. Tommy and Ricardo Gelael, a partner of his, were found guilty of corruption in a 1995 land exchange deal between wholesale firm PT Goro Batara Sakti and the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).

Tommy and the other Soeharto children started developing their business interests after their father managed to fasten his grip as a kleptomaniac ruler. Tommy started with the Humpuss Group in 1984 when he was 22 years of age. The group has 70 companies in various sectors, including aviation, automotives, toll road construction, oil, gas, petrochemicals, timber and agribusiness.

According to Asia's Wealth Club, a list of the 100 richest people in Asia, Tommy's estimated net worth is US$600 million. But he is a pauper compared to his sister Tutut, whose estimated wealth is $2 billion.

However, regardless of how rich he is, my initial reaction following the verdict's announcement was one of surprise: Soeharto's son going to jail? It was beyond the nation's wildest dream until 1998, the year he was forced by the students to step down.

But after two minutes of thinking and blinking I realized that it showed how times have really changed, the nation has been freed and the country's judiciary is courageous enough to hear the people. It is no longer a tool of a heartless tyrant.

When the crime was committed, Tommy, as with the other Soehartos, must have been carried away by smugness, believing his father's iron-fist rule would continue and God would step down once the mighty Soeharto went to heaven (mind you, Soeharto still put an extra star on each of his epaulets).

But my humble self felt deep sympathy when Tommy seemed to be at a loss about how to avoid a prompt journey to Cipinang Prison. He could ask for a judicial review from the Supreme Court but he seemed to be aware that he was short of fresh material evidence to support his plea.

At last he remembered Abdurrahman Wahid, the president he knows well. Tommy knows Gus Dur not only as a head of state who until recently was heads over heels to throw him behind bars, but also as a saint. So why not beg the pardon of such a good man?

The public and Tommy were united in waiting for the presidential decision. Normally a head of state would need months to study his request, weighing it together with the considerations of the Supreme Court and other officials before making a decision. That would usually take up enough time for someone to keep out of the slammer.

However, Tommy again needed our sympathy. No sooner had the energetic Gus Dur reached the palace on his return from a foreign trip on Wednesday than he declared there would be no pardon for Tommy.

Gus Dur cannot be blamed, or applauded, for everything. The anticorruption drive was started by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) in 1998 in its shocking decree, which singled out Soeharto, his children and cronies as possible culprits.

The greatest -- some would say tragic -- irony of the decree was that it was signed by none other then MPR speaker Harmoko, who until a few weeks before was Soeharto's most loyal fellow traveler.

Now who is to blame for the decree made by the country's highest constitutional body? Harmoko? Two hundred million Indonesians? Of course not.

My neighbor, maybe. He guiltlessly commented on the decree: "The whole Cendana family will be moved to Cipinang? Why not? They are rich, they buy the whole plot of land and will not need to build a wall because the old one is high enough to protect them."

But it is hard to jail my neighbor because he is an editor whose newspaper was twice the victim of Soeharto's sword of Damocles.

Many believe Tommy has sacrificed for all, especially his siblings. Yet we are glad to see that his condition is much better than other Indonesians, like the members of the Group of 50, the critics of his father who were ruthlessly ostracized for voicing their political stand, or those who were jailed by a kangaroo court at his pleasure.

At least Tommy got a fair trial. And he may yet become a hero by acting as the "protective agent" for the rest of the Soehartos.

-- Thayeb I. Sabil