“I have made up my mind and it will be disclosed tomorrow [Monday],” Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told media editors at the State Palace on Sunday night.

He declined to state exactly what his ruling will be except to say that it will be an out of court settlement.

“It will be controversial, it will have consequences, but it’s a risk that I have to take,” he said, adding that “the ruling will be just”.

The National Police and the Attorney General’s Office have been locked in a fierce battle with the KPK, over a corruption investigation against two of its deputies, Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah, suspended from their jobs pending  legal processes.

KPK supporters said that all the evidence against them was circumstantial and that the two men had been the target of a vendetta after the KPK sent many top law enforcement officers to jail for corruption.

Yudhoyono had earlier declined to intervene in the dispute in spite of a public outcry; but he set up the “Team of Eight”, made up mostly of highly respected figures, to check the credibility of the police investigation against Bibit and Chandra.

The team last week submitted its report after two weeks of investigation, recommending that the President order the case to be dropped.

Yudhoyono said he has had two weeks to ponder over the issue, and has taken into account his team’s report as well as public opinion, most of which was behind Bibit and Chandra in their dispute with the police.

“I don’t want this disharmony between the KPK, the National Police and the Attorney General Office to be permanent. This has got to stop,” Yudhoyono said.

Earlier in the evening, the President also met with key players in the dispute including in particular the National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri and Attorney General Hendarman Supandji.

The meeting was held “to take into account inputs from institution leaders” on the KPK, his new spokesman Julian A. Pasha said.    

Today’s announcement of the President’s decision is hoped to provide closure to the main roadblock to the President’s early days into his second term as the nation’s first directly re-elected president.

Observers have urged SBY to follow the team’s recommendations.

Failure to dismiss the police chief and the attorney general,  political analyst Arbi Sanit said Sunday, would spread increasing public distrust with the government.  

“He is a president who counts heavily on his public image as he is backed by a weak party. His Democratic Party only secured 20 percent [of legislative seats], and the coalition he formed has proven to be weak, given its internal discord over the Bank Century scandal inquiry petition”  at the House of Representatives,  he said.

The President also urged authorities to disclose the details of the Bank Century case, involving a controversial bailout costing some US$176 million of taxpayers’ money.  

Separately on Sunday  the National Police acknowledged its national detective had summoned
the media  without proper coordination, detik.com reported,  and that the requests for “clarifications” from the Kompas and Seputar Indonesia (Sindo) newspaper dailies  would be the last  such requests from the media.

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