TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has faced major storms all of last year, right up to now. A slew of threats, ranging from attempts to curtail its authority by the House of Representatives (DPR) special committee, and the government's indecisiveness in protecting the agency, to violent assaults against some of its senior investigators.
Even so, the greatest threat, in fact, lies within the commission itself, with its grave internal divisions. Agus Rahardjos leadership failed to consolidate the strength of his personnel. The conflict became public when Investigation Director Aris Budiman attended a meeting with the special committee, although as DPRs ad-hoc body.
The internal rift began when President Joko Widodo appointed acting Chief Taufiequrachman Ruki to replace Abraham Samad in 2015. Abraham was suspended following criminalization attempts by the Police. Ruki then appointed police officers in several key posts, such as Insp. Gen. Heru Winarko as Deputy of Legal Actions and Brig. Gen. Aris Budiman as Director of Investigation. In an unprecedented manner, Heru’s swearing-in ceremony in October 2015 was attended by Luhut Pandjaitan, then the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, and Chief Justice Agung Prasetyo.
The placement of police officers during Ruki’s era instigated conflicts between the group and the internal investigators. Now Agus Rahardjo has the opportunity to mend the rift. Last month, Heru left his post after being appointed as chief at the National Narcotics Agency. Meanwhile, a ‘peaceful way out’ has been paved for Aris Budiman, who was found to have committed a serious code of ethics violation with the special committee. KPK did not immediately transfer him back to the national police, but will first select his replacement together with an open recruitment for the position of deputy of legal actions.
There are 10 candidates for the two posts: three from the police and seven from the attorney general's office. The lack of internal candidates was reportedly due to the stringent requirements for the posts, including experience as a director or a bureau head and in investigation or intelligence, and the minimum age of 45. For the post of investigation director, the police submitted three candidates, and several internal KPK personnel are poised to take part in the test.
Agus Rahardjo should announce the names of the candidates vying for these critical posts so that the public can scrutinize their backgrounds, including their commitment in prosecuting previous corruption cases. As such, the KPK will be able to choose candidates who have no conflict of group interests and are serious in exposing major corruption cases.
Last year the KPK made inquiries into 123 cases and investigated 182 cases, including 61 that were carried forward from the previous year. The agency also conducted numerous raids (OTT), especially on regional heads. But it also has cases that remain unresolved for a long time, such as the graft case involving three units of quay container cranes at the Pelindo II with Richard Joost Lino as a suspect. Another one involves Rolls-Royce engines and Airbus aircraft for Garuda Indonesia with Emirsyah Satar as a suspect.
Besides sting operations, the agency can still reveal a lot more cases with bigger impacts. The right legal actions deputy and investigation director-ones who are competent and free of any conflict of interest will be able to help accomplish this mission.
Read the full article in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine