Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono continues to lead from the rear this week, abandoning key figures in his administration to the wolves while his coalition partners (including the Grinch’s favorite Twit) patiently chip away at national anti-corruption efforts.
In an effort to distance himself from possible scandal, SBY (aka Limp Biskit) fled the country as his embattled vice president and finance minister prepared to address a hostile parliamentary commission – which is 100 per cent apolitical and absolutely not in any way remotely related to a personal vendetta between the current head of Golkar and the minister – investigating the dodgy bailout of Bank Century last year.
For analysis of the President’s decision to vanish without a public show of support for Veep Boediono and the well-regarded Sri Mulyani Indrawati, we turn now to the Ballad of Brave Sir Robin:
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!Boediono – formerly of Bank Indonesia – remains a cipher but Sri Mulyani is a national hero. A former IMF poobah, Forbes Magazine’s 23rd most powerful woman in the world (2008), and remarkably resilient to social pressures to helmet-ize her hair, she’s been around long enough to be an excellent counter-puncher: rather than airing her feelings about chief Golkar hood Aburizal Bakrie in the local media (who’ll garble the message), she went on record with her misgivings about the parliamentary investigation in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, an organ much more likely to influence Bakrie’s bottom line than the local business rags, all of whom are in someone’s pocket.
Let the games begin!
In other news:
The assault on efforts to bust corrupt businessmen and politicians remains one of the many news nodes spinning off recent scandals involving the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and once again, Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
“I don’t want law enforcers and government agencies to wiretap each other,” Antara quoted the Minister of Twits as saying. “This has happened and could happen again.”
A bit of background.
Indonesia's legal system is a disgrace: one can state categorically that there is no justice in the land. And don't talk to me about friggin' racial profiling, crack cocaine & mandatory minimum sentences, OJ Simpson and the cost of rigging a Manhattan jury. We’re talking orders of magnitude more f****d up than the worst North America can throw down.
The Grinch has worked within the system - most recently at the highest court in the land - and outside: from top-to-bottom the courts, attorney general's office, law enforcement, legal profession etc are populated by cabals of venal, money-grubbing, soulless safari-suited scumbags. They are overwhelmingly the majority. No matter how clean and idealistic they are at the start, the machine grinds ‘em into dust.
It is a reflection of the rot, that even Indonesia’s toothy civil society manages to suspend its sense of disbelief long enough to stamp senior cops "clean" even though they live in million dollar homes, drive Harleys and send their kids to school abroad, ostensibly on a $400.00/mo salary. The clean ones are the ones who have stolen enough to afford to be clean.
The KPK is the most effective (only!) institution investigating corruption cases in Indonesia. They've nailed many pelts above their doors and, while most have been the low-hanging-fruit-variety, (plot: old school crooked politician filmed entering 5-Star hotel suite rented by industrialist empty-handed; exits with suitcase fulla dough) they are to be commended for their work.
The KPK – which operates independently of any government ministry and reports directly to the Presidential Palace – is staffed by the best and brightest, including cops, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, techies etc. They are uber-nationalistic and hate the way their country is portrayed overseas. I wouldn’t say they are ‘anti-foreigner’ (they’ve received heaps of help from the FBI and others) but there is definite ‘f***-you’ faction that bristles at what is sees as Westerners lecturing them about their own country (topic for another day, perhaps).
It also enjoys the right – a scary one in any jurisdiction – to conduct warrant-less wiretaps. Desperate times require desperate measures and it was Parliament itself that approved these measures a few years back as being necessary to ensure successful cases were mounted. All was hunky dory until the mouth-breathers in Parliament – the most corrupt institution in RI according to a 2009 Transparency International report – discovered that they too are subject to KPK taps. Doh!
The KPK itself has been embroiled in a major scandal the past few months. Its chair is on trial for allegedly organizing the contract killing of a bent businessman last year who was supposedly blackmailing him for copping a handjob from his third wife, a caddy at a local golf course. Disclosures by the KPK boss prior to trial lead to a very senior cop and a millionaire businessman (allegedly) collaborating to frame two well-regarded members of the KPK board for taking bribes.
It’s all very Byzantine but the upshot is that the public is furious with the police and AG, the Limp Biskit has intervened and the investigation is in the process of being ‘legally’ dropped (as opposed to illegally dropped which, seriously, is kinda what has happened).
Into all this wades the fellow who is rapidly emerging as my personal favorite political piñata and all-round doofus. Fresh from cutting access to blogs around the country, blaming catastrophic natural disasters on pornography, and censoring an Aussie movie about murdered journalists in East Timor, Minister Tifatul, he of Twitter & Facebook fame, has decided that restricting KPK’s use of wiretaps - and gelding the KPK - is in the public's best interest.
To be fair, Twitfat's pronouncements on this issue make a valid point. Too many government agencies (five at last count) can tap yer phone, though I understand all but the KPK require a judge's signature, a formality in a land where a Rolex (hell, a Swatch!) will get you off a murder charge.
Warrantless wiretaps make this civil libertarian very queasy. So too does the massive public clamoring for the President to intervene directly in the police investigation into the KPK case (more fertile ground for Blog musings), but to suggest it and a revamped Porno Law are public priorities is laughable.
It’s all the more suspicious because of Twitfat’s pedigree as the former head of the supposedly incorruptible Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) aka Taliban-Lite. PKS is one of the president’s coalition partners. Talk about mixed messages: After prevaricating and stumbling about in the wilds for Javanese semantics for ages, Limp Biskit last week declared anti-corruption efforts to be a ‘Jihad’, even as members of his own cabinetare working diligently to undermine one of the key tools the KPK has in prosecuting that war, and he abandons his top aides to a parliamentary investigation with barely a murmur.
