Anggodo Widjojo. Suddenly, his name is so popular this week. His popularity reached its peak on Tuesday when the Constitutional Court played a wiretapped recording - divided into nine fi les - between Anggodo and several people. The recordings also implicated top officials in the National Police, the Attorney General's Offi ce (AGO) and even President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The live broadcast recordings, which were played as part of its judicial review of the law on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), lasted for four-and-ahalf hours and attracted the attention of the Indonesian people. They wanted to know what really happened: were the recordings similar to the one already published in newspapers, were two KPK suspended deputies -Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah - guilty or had they been framed?
The recordings have opened the eyes of commoners that the presence of "court mafi a" is real. It showed how easily people like Anggodo, whose money is probably unlimited, had a close contact with the police and state prosecutors.
The recordings also moved the public to immediately protest against the police's earlier arrest of Bibit and Chandra - on charges of bribery and abuse of power -and demanded that they be released from detention. Despite denials that they would not bow down to public pressure, the police fi nally released the two past midnight Wednesday.
Still, Anggodo walks free. His appearance in his selfdefense talk show in a TV station for nearly three hours sparked anger from the President-sanctioned fact-fi nding team leader Adnan Buyung Nasution, who questioned the police's stance for allowing Anggodo - who was the center of the whole case - to roam the city freely.
Anggodo's freedom has sparked another allegation that there could be a bigger scenario than what has already been exposed to the public. Questions were raised if there are other bigger names implicated in the issue.
The police stubbornness for not naming Anggodo as a suspect in the case raised public anger, including the fact-fi nding team, dubbed Team 8. They had threatened to resign should their recommendations not be fulfi lled. The recommendations were the suspension of Susno and the arrest of Anggodo. The police turned deaf ears although the recommendations came from the country's legal experts such as Buyung, Todung Mulya Lubis and scholars Anies Baswedan, Hikmahanto Juwana and Komaruddin Hidayat.
Only after Yudhoyono himself ordered National Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri to make Susno fi nally submit his resignation, only during the inquiry by Team 8 which only lasts for two weeks.
Susno has been under the spotlight thanks to his famous quote (due to him being wiretapped by the KPK) in describing the rivalry between his corps and the antigraft body as the cicak vs buaya (lizard vs. crocodile) saga.
Along with Susno, Deputy Attorney General Abdul Hakim Ritonga - whose name was also mentioned in the recordings - also resigned from his post.
Despite the principle of presumption of innocence, it is diffi cult for the public to easily accept the police reasoning that they could not arrest Anggodo, after questioning him for 24 hours, due to lack of solid evidence. For the public, the recordings only confi rmed their beliefs that cops are the bad guys.
As a new democracy, Indonesia is still learning how to uphold the law. Apparently, bureaucratic reform within law enforcer agencies are more diffi cult that anyone ever imagine that even a decade after the reform movement, only little progress has been made. The police success stories in killing most wanted terror suspects and their improvement in services for driving license extension were wiped out because of the case.
Yudhoyono and Vice President Boediono - who named Cabinet members on Oct. 20 - are facing a tough test at the beginning of their fi ve-year tenure. The National Summit, at which prioritized programs for national development were meant to be discussed, was buried by the issue.
Many demanded that the President take action in an effort to avoid further damage to the nation.
The public have accumulated distrust towards law enforcers. Some of them have experienced injustice in petty cases. Take Prita Mulyasari as an example. She had been detained for sending an email complaining about the poor services of a hospital. Only after public support - such as on Facebook - was she released from detention. A worse case happened to Aguswandi Tanjung, who was brought to court for charging his mobile phone in the lobby of his apartment on legal charges of "stealing power".
The detention of Bibit and Chandra was the tip of the iceberg concerning public distrust to law enforcers.
Yudhoyono should be smart enough to use the momentum to reform the police and the AGO as well as to regain public trust, who had voted for him in July. His landslide victory should be an advantage to continue the development programs as he promised during his campaign.
If he does nothing and lets the situation get out of control, the legal system in Indonesia is in jeopardy. Without hard work to "clean up" law enforcer agencies, corruption remains the main obstacle in the development process.
The people, including Yudhoyono's voters, will be the one suffering from the corrupt system. But people like Anggodo will remain mighty to control law enforcers.
- Primastuti Handayani
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