PDI-P, Democratic Party fight to lead inquiry committee

The battle to influence the probe into the Bank Century scandal has begun with the Democratic Party dueling with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) for the chairmanship of the inquiry team into the scandal.

All factions in the House of Representatives have regarded the committee’s chairmanship post as crucial in influencing the scope of the inquiry team’s probe, including who would be summoned and what questions should be asked.  

The PDI-P has said that as an initiator of the petition demanding the establishment of the committee, its legislator must chair the committee.

“As the party that initiated the petition for the committee, it would be very appropriate if the leadership posts of the committee were given to the PDI-P,” PDI-P Secretary General Pramono Anung said.

He also said he truly appreciated the decision of the Democratic Party to finally join in the support for the endorsement of the committee, which will probe the Bank Century bailout scandal, causing losses of Rp 6.76 trillion (US$710 million) of taxpayers’ money.

Despite the Democratic Party’s late participation, a number of its legislators argue that their party deserves to chair the committee due to their dominant size in the House, in which the party has more than 140 seats out of the 560 House members compared to the PDI-P’s 94 House legislators.

“Proportionally speaking, we are the dominant faction. So we deserve to chair it,” Democratic Party’s Ruhut Sitompul said.

Ruhut’s party colleague and House speaker, Marzuki Alie, said a proportional method would be used to determine the chairman.

Observers have said that Democratic Party wanted the chairmanship post to prevent the committee from summoning Yudhoyono.

The inclusion of the Democratic Party means that there are now more than 400 legislators in the House that have supported the committee, making the endorsement scheduled to be decided during a plenary session on Dec. 1 seemingly inevitable.

A legislator from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Mukhamad Misbakhun, said the Democratic Party could not use its dominant size as the justification to overtake the parties that had initiated the committee in the first place.

“The chairman or chairwoman post must be given to one of the initiators, otherwise, the committee could lose its soul and spirit.”

The Golkar Party supported the PDI-P, according to Golkar legislator Bambang Soesatyo.

Both Mukhamad and Bambang said the committee, once established, would work in the most transparent manner and that it would not hesitate to summon anyone suspected to be involved in the debacle.

“Vice President Boediono, the Bank Indonesia governor when the bailout was issued, and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani will definitely be summoned, because they are the central figures behind the policy,” Bambang said.

“It is also possible that we will summon former vice president Jusuf Kalla, because he was in charge when the bailout was issued. During that time, the President was abroad.”

Bambang also said should the committee see that Yudhoyono needed to be summoned, it would do that as well.