The Jakarta Globe, Jul 16, 2015
“He’s not working the way the chief of detectives is supposed to work, but is instead carrying out a campaign of revenge for a cabal of cronies.”
Jakarta. Calls are mounting thick and fast for President Joko Widodo to fire a controversial police general behind an ongoing campaign to undermine the national antigraft commission and its supporters.
Haris Azhar, a coordinator at the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), a human rights NGO, on Thursday accused Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, the National Police’s chief of detectives, of turning the police force into a public enemy through his “vengeful” criminalization of officials from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and related institutions.
“Everything is being ruined because of this quest for vengeance,” Haris said on Thursday, adding that Waseso was acting “as though the police are the only law enforcement institution in the country.”
Waseso is a self-professed sycophant to deputy police chief Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, a one-time corruption suspect who won a severely flawed court ruling that threw out the charges against him before he was even indicted.
When the Judicial Commission, the government-appointed watchdog for the nation’s courts, last week recommended that the judge in the pretrial hearing, Sarpin Rizaldi, be suspended for six months for passing down the ruling, Waseso’s office immediately accommodated Sarpin’s request to press defamation charges against two of the commission’s members, chairman Suparman Marzuki and commissioner Taufiqurahman Sauri.
Waseso’s office has also orchestrated a string of transparently trumped-up charges against KPK officials since the antigraft commission in January named Budi a graft suspect.
Kontras and a coalition of civil society organizations have documented 49 instances in which the police force has pursued dubious charges against individuals linked to the KPK or speaking out in support of the antigraft commission, including former deputy justice minister Denny Indrayana, who, within days of denouncing Sarpin’s pretrial ruling, found himself charged with corruption in a years-old project carried out at his ministry.
“It’s time to fire the chief of detectives,” Haris said. “He’s not working the way the chief of detectives is supposed to work, but is instead carrying out a campaign of revenge for a cabal of cronies.”
Cherry-picking
Waseso claims that in charging the various individuals, including KPK chairman Abraham Samad, deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto and investigator Novel Baswedan, his office is simply following up on complaints filed by members of the public.
What he has failed to mention, though, is that in most of those cases, the said members of the public are in fact affiliated with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), whose chairwoman, Megawati Soekarnoputri, is known to be close to Budi Gunawan, and whose secretary general, Hasto Kristiyanto, is alleged to be the mastermind behind the plot to undermine the KPK.
If Waseso is really responding to public complaints, Haris argued, “then what about all the cases of labor violations, the murder of [human rights activist] Munir [Said Thalib], the cases of violence against the press?”
“Why is it that when the complaints are targeted against the KPK and antigraft activists, the [police’s] response is so swift?” Haris said.
Muchtar Pakpahan, a labor rights activist with the Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union (SBSI) who in 2010 ran a failed bid to be appointed as a KPK commissioner, echoed the criticism of Waseso, saying that since he took office in January, “the detectives’ unit has been acting erratically.”
The demands for Waseso to be fired have escalated since he lashed out this week at Ahmad “Buya” Syafii Maarif, the highly regarded former chairman of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-biggest Islamic organization, accusing him of not understanding the law.
Buya has been one of Waseso’s most vocal critics since the latter began going after the KPK officials in January, accusing the police general of not understanding detective work and of not having “the least bit of competence or professionalism.”
“That’s the sign of an official [Waseso] who lacks confidence. He’s mentally unstable if he can so easily name people as suspects,” Buya told an audience that included President Joko and the current KPK leadership on Monday. “I hope the nation no longer has to be led by someone as erratic as this.”
Waseso, responding on Tuesday, said, “There’s no need for him to comment or interfere in law enforcement matters when he doesn’t even understand law enforcement. He’s not stupid, but he must understand what’s good law enforcement and what’s bad law enforcement.”
Petition
That belligerence appears to have backfired, with many who were once silent on the issue now piling in, outraged at the response to the highly respected Buya.
Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak, the chairman of Muhammadiyah’s hugely influential youth wing, and Ray Rangkuti, of the voter advocacy group Indonesian Civil Society Circle (Lima), on Wednesday initiated a petition on Change.org calling for Joko to fire Waseso.
They noted that in the same time that his office had pursued charges against 49 KPK members and others sympathetic to the antigraft cause, the detectives’ unit had only begun investigating four actual corruption cases, naming only 10 people as suspects – none of whom has yet been indicted.
As of 1 p.m. on Thursday, 21 hours since it was launched, the petition had garnered close to 5,500 signatures and counting.
Kontras’s Haris said a major part of the problem was the president’s inaction on the issue, despite the blatant attempts by the detectives’ unit to undermine the country’s antigraft community.
“Given how this situation has escalated as a result of the lack of action [by the president], this bad momentum needs to be put to good use,” he said. “So we ask the police chief to evaluate the performance of the chief of detectives, Budi Waseso, who appears to be prioritizing vengeful interests.”
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zo 19 jul 2015 - 6:56