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.