Former Surabaya legislative council speaker Musyafak Rouf was freed Wednesday in a graft case in which he was charged with receiving part of a Rp 720 million (US$75,500) gratuity from senior city administration officials.
Presiding judge Ali Makki told the Surabaya District Court the defendant had not been proved guilty of receiving a bribe, and thus he had not broken the 2001 anticorruption law or the Criminal Code.
"It has not been proved that the defendant abused his power to enrich himself or others or caused losses to the state," Ali said to cheering and applause from Musyafak and his relatives during the two-hour trial.
Prosecutors had demanded Musyafak be sentenced to one and a half years in prison and fined Rp 50 million.
The same court had also acquitted Surabaya administration secretary Sukamto Hadi, development administration assistant Mukhlas Udin and former treasurer Purwita of similar charges on Oct. 21, 2009.
The three officials had been charged with bribing Surabaya councilors some Rp 720 million in an attempt to smooth the way for two major development projects in the city: the Surabaya Sport Center (SSC) and the Mass Rapid Transportation (MRT) system, or busway.
The graft case was uncovered by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) when auditors found two transfers of funds from the city administration to the council, suspected as bribes to speed up the launch of the two planned projects in 2007.
The first transfer of Rp 470 million was made by Sukamto on Oct. 4, 2007, and the second, worth Rp 250 million, on Nov. 28, 2007.
Commenting on the acquittals, legal expert I Wayan Titip Sulaksana from Airlangga University in Surabaya said the release of the four suspects indicated "the death of law enforcement", especially for corruption eradication, in the country. "Basically, I respect the Surabaya District Court verdict. However, I am disappointed the judges ignored certain facts revealed at the trials."
"The judges only considered the explanation of the law expert who was produced as a witness by the defendants' lawyers. However, they ignored testimony from the law expert presented by the prosecutors," he said.
Titip slammed the trial as "unfair" and claimed it broke "people's trust".
He urged the central government to form corruption courts in every province across the country to send corrupt officials to prison. The government should recruit clean judges for the planned courts in an effort to speed up corruption eradication.
"The establishment of corruption courts in every province in Indonesia, especially in East Java, is urgent as many corruption suspects these days are freed by judges. We don't want to see more corrupters acquitted, do we?" Titip said.
He encouraged people to be more active in helping combat corruption by keeping their eyes open and informing on any such wrongdoing. He said all people should be aware of what was going on around them.
"Let's generate a movement to stop corruption by making corruption a public enemy. We need to inform people that corruption is as dangerous as latent communism," he added.
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