The raging battle between the gecko and the crocodile conjures lots of names: Anggoro, Anggodo, Ari, Yulianto, Yuliana, Susno, Chandra, Rianto, Ritonga and Wisnu ...
"Anggoro" actually reminds me of my brother-in-law who works for a state-owned drink water company. "Ari" reminds me of dozens of friends of the same name. "Ritonga" reminds me of an ex-neighbor who invited me to play chess with him.
And "Anggodo" is a clever monkey warrior in the Ramayana epic in the Javanese wayang, where intrigue, war and women dominate story plots of the days of yore when the antigraft commission, wiretapping and modern policing were not even dreamed up.
And "Yulianto"? There must be millions of people going around by the same name as the most mysterious figure in the law enforcers' conflict, which flared after the police accused the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) leaders of bribery and abuse of power.
He is the missing link concerning the Rp 5 billion (US$522,000) that Anggoro allegedly intended to use to stop the KPK from investigating his involvement in a Rp 180 billion irregularity in the supply of communication radio equipment for the Forestry Ministry.
The fugitive Anggoro reportedly handed the hot money to his younger brother Anggodo, who passed it on to middleman Ari Muladi. Ari claimed he transferred the fund to the KPK leaders through another broker named Yulianto.
The fund's whereabouts became a puzzle when KPK deputies Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah, the intended recepients, denied accepting the money.
Interestingly, the police - who have been widely known to defend the Anggoro camp - have not interrogated Yulianto. Instead, they stick to Ari's initial confessions, which he later withdrew: that he had personally handed the cash to KPK deputy Ade Rahardja.
Yulianto turns out to be a "ghost". Not even Ari can provide an adequate description of him, let alone the whereabouts of Yulianto. Some doubt he actually exists.
Can you believe it: entrusting somebody you hardly know with Rp 5 billion cash to bribe antigraft officials?
And Yulianto is but one of the many people mentioned in the wiretapped conversations among reported anti-KPK plotters, who are lucky to have been spared from the police hunt in the glaringly inconsistent affair.
Even Anggodo, who openly admitted to have served as a financier in the affair, remains at large, even though the law prescribes that both the briber and recipient are subject to prosecution.
Also untouched is Ong Yuliana, who was heard to say in the recordings that "SBY supports us *Anggodo camp*" and "KPK will be disbanded, got it?" She also checked if prosecutor Ritonga had received the "durian" she had sent him.
Why is it so difficult for the cops to get a businessman like Yulianto when they have been overwhelmed with praise worldwide for eventually finding such intelligent terrorists as Noordin M. Top and his accomplices?
Tired of police inaction, local journalists have been playing sleuths, knocking on the doors of businessmen by the name of Yulianto in Surabaya. The result? Disastrous as you may guess.
A local newspaper even splashed a photograph of a man it believed was Yulianto on its front page. To make the story juicy, the paper also published a shot of a Taiwan actress it claimed was his ex.
The next day, Ari called a media briefing saying the man featured on the paper wasn't the right Yulianto.
Over the last fortnight, at least two entrepreneurs named "Yulianto" were enraged by nosy reporters and fiercely denied they were the missing links.
"This Yulianto is Chinese - not Javanese as Ari means," one of the Yulianto's lawyers said in Surabaya.
Thanks to Facebook, I could contact an ex-classmate named Yulianto. I asked him if he was the sought-after Indonesian man.
To his amusement, he replied, "No. I'm an English teacher."
Rats! I had to bury my dream for a share of the Rp 5 billion from a long-lost friend.
- PANDAYA
