No executive orders required, or even a nod and a wink. To a bureaucracy still gripped in an autocratic mind set, even the frown on a president's face might be interpreted as an executive order.
In a court of law, there is little, if any, corroborative evidence that implicates the President in the KPK scandal.
But in the court of public opinion, circumstantial evidence would be suffice to convict President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as being guilty by omission.
The crime of hubris emerging through the KPK saga via a catalogue of perjury, deceit, illicit favors, kickbacks and personal retribution.
In the scheme of things the Presidential Palace was unlikely to be complicit in the surge to undermine the country's premier corruption fighting body. *Plausible deniability' the first tool of any executive decision maker to claim ignorance and innocence. Hence for now, references to the President's inner circle in leaked recordings should be taken simply as enthusiastic name-dropping by the presiding jury.
However, on the scale of these events, the mood of permissiveness and the open fa*ade of executive displeasure towards the KPK, may have created a damning mind set, which might have motivated a mesh of converging interests to take action of their own.
In public the President extended deference to anti-corruption efforts, but his body language in private betrayed unease.
In April the President issued an incredulous statement warning legal institutions not to "entrap" people by using their ignorance of the law.
".We can always remind them (if they are ignorant of their offence before the law). I underline this to the Attorney General's Office and KPK," he remarked.
In June an overzealous state auditor team arrived to conduct an abrupt inspection of KPK's financial and performance reports. The Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) team took action immediately after newspapers publicized Yudhoyono's revealing concern that the KPK might become a *superbody'.
"This KPK has extraordinary power. It seems its responsibility is only to God," the President said.
BPKP chief Didi Widiyadi inisisted there was no direct written order from the Palace, however "his (the President's) statement is an early warning and as presidential aides we consider that to be an order".
Earlier in the year witnesses also recounted an internal briefing of the Democratic Party in which Yudhoyono spoke less than favorably concerning the KPK.
Not surprisingly, months ago the hint of a methodical effort to undermine the KPK was already in the air.
"Dark clouds are gathering above KPK," rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis already said in July. There is a systematical effort to usurp the KPK's authority, he added.
"It won't be easy when there is conspiracy at all levels".
Greed and self-preservation may be proverbial motives for the actors directly behind the scandal. But such reasoning is not appropriate for the highest echelons of power.
The historic revelations of the Watergate scandal enveloping Richard Nixon's presidency over three decades ago provides uncomfortable parallels.
When the Watergate story initially broke, Nixon was on a political high. Just like Yudhoyono.
Both scandals slowly ensnared - directly or indirectly - presidents who secured landslide second term electoral victories. Neither needed to act so desperately.
While the former encouraged conspiracy, the latter inadvertently permeated permissiveness. Given the need for compelling reasons of dominance of power or as a reprisal for personal indignity they fell into the ego-ridden neurosis of human affairs leading to a syndrome of the compromise of integrity.
One can never belittle the tribulations, shame and anger when having a close family member dragged to jail and convicted of corruption.
The lessons and events which shaped Watergate are replicating themselves today.
The power of good men to stand up to abuse of power abound today. The role of the press is clear in exposing injustice and placing it on the public agenda. And the recognition that presidents and governments - despite landslide mandates- cannot be left unchecked without the firewalls of oversight.
Guilty, but not charged. The prosecution against the President rests.
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|