Tommy's vanishing act

Tommy's vanishing act

From the beginning, as far as the public is concerned, it had
never been very likely that Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, former
president Soeharto's youngest son, would ever spend time in
prison, never mind his legal transgressions.

Police declared Tommy a fugitive as of midnight Saturday,
after police had been banging on and waiting at his front gate on
Friday for more than six hours. In vain. Tommy, the apple of
Soeharto's eye, appeared to have vanished.

Impossible? Depends on how one looks at the incident.

To those who have been casually following the proceedings of
Tommy's trial in the innocent belief that the 38-year-old could
be trusted, his disappearance may look incredible and unexpected
indeed.

To others, who have been observing the twisted funny little
details of the trial from the beginning, and watching the whole
proceedings with a healthy degree of skepticism, Tommy's
vanishing act on Friday was only a logical consequence of the way
the authorities have been handling the case -- something that
could have been expected all along.

Tommy went on trial -- first as a suspect, then as a defendant
-- in the South Jakarta District Court early last year in a land
scam involving PT Goro Batara Sakti (GBS) and the government
logistics agency Bulog. On trial with him was Ricardo Gelael. The
shady deal involved the swapping of a tract of swampy land for
prime piece of real estate belonging to Bulog that caused the
state to suffer losses amounting to Rp 76.7 billion, or the
equivalent of US$8.2 million. Also involved in the same case was
Beddu Amang, a former head of Bulog.

Beddu was acquitted in April last year on some technicalities.
Tommy and Ricardo were absolved of any wrongdoing in October that
same year for lack of evidence. But the state attorneys appealed
the decision in the Supreme Court, which overturned in September
the South Jakarta District Court's verdict and ordered both Tommy
and Ricardo spend 18 months in jail.

From here on the case began to take some rather odd twists and
turns. Both men remained free since the Supreme Court's ruling,
but while Ricardo admitted his misdeed, Tommy continued to deny
having done any wrongdoing but, nevertheless, asked for a
presidential pardon.

Tommy formally appealed for a pardon on Oct. 3, which forced a
stay of the execution of the sentence. He also appealed for a
judicial review of the case. While a formal decision on the
pardon was pending, Tommy sought to arrange a meeting with
President Abdurrahman Wahid, who agreed to meet him privately at
the Borobudur Hotel on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, giving rise to public
speculations of a secret deal.

To assuage the public's suspicions, the President made it
known that he would turn down any request on Tommy's part for a
pardon. True to his word, he did so a few days later, but Tommy
and his lawyers somehow managed to evade receiving the
presidential decree rejecting the plea.

With time running out and the public complaining that the case
had been dragging on long enough, prosecutors called on Tommy to
surrender himself to the authorities and gave him until Friday 2
p.m. to comply. What follows is public knowledge.

When a team from the public prosecutor's office, accompanied
by a platoon of the police's Mobile Brigade arrived at Tommy's
address on Jl. Rasamala, Menteng, Central Jakarta, at the
designated time, they found the house deserted.

The whole incident raises a number of questions. Why, for
example, did the prosecutors need to call on a person, already
convicted of a crime, to surrender himself to the authorities?
Why did they not keep the convicted businessman and his house
under surveillance when they knew, or should have known, he was
only stalling the execution of a court verdict?

For President Abdurrahman Wahid, in his position as head of
the government as well as personally, this could an important
test case of the government's credibility. It could determine
whether the public can be convinced of the government's sincerity
in its promise to firmly establish the rule of law in this
country.

With things as they are at present, Abdurrahman's observation
that his rejection of Tommy's appeal for a pardon is proof that
the law rules supreme, and that the principle of equality before
the law has been established, sounds rather hollow.