The eventual, though sluggish, decision on Tuesday by the Attorney General’s Office (AGO ) to drop the criminal cases against suspended Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputies Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah should be welcomed and used as a trigger to rejuvenate the country’s temporarily halted antigraft movement.
The dropping of both cases should therefore be followed by the immediate issuance of a presidential decree that will constitutionally reinstate Bibit and Chandra as deputies to the KPK chairman. The post of commission chairman is temporarily being held by an interim, as suspended chairman Antasari Azhar is currently on trial for his alleged involvement in the March 2009 murder of state-owned pharmaceutical company director Nasruddin Zulkarnaen.
The cases against Bibit and Chandra had been controversial since the very beginning. Yet it took nearly three months for the AGO to analyze them before eventually considering and bowing to the massively increasing public pressure that the cases be dropped and the two suspended anticorruption commission executives be cleared of all the allegations due to the lack or dearth of evidence.
The dropping of the cases against Bibit and Chandra should now be used as momentum to restore good relations and cooperation between the three law enforcement institutions, namely the KPK, the National Police and the AGO.
The relations among the three turned sour and inharmonious, especially after the findings by the KPK on two high-profile cases — the combined corruption-bribery case surrounding a telecommunications procurement project for the Forestry Ministry, involving fugitive businessman Anggoro Widjojo, and the bailout of the then ailing Bank Century — which implicated a number of top and high-ranking officials from both the AGO and police.
The three-party dispute escalated as then KPK chairman Antasari was implicated in the Nasruddin murder case, while charges of abuse of power and receiving bribes were later filed against Bibit and Chandra, which were only withdrawn on Tuesday by the AGO.
The timing of the cases being cancelled should also be used for the three law enforcement institutions — the KPK, the police and the AGO — to reform themselves, mainly for the revolutionary improvement of their performance. As the police and the AGO must struggle hard to gain public trust and confidence, the anticorruption commission should also be able to keep a balance between its considerably “super body-like” authority and its original nature as a law enforcement institution that hold nothing higher other than truth and justice.
Apart from the “happy settlement of the dispute”, the reconciliatory mood between the three law enforcement institutions should, however, not mean compromises in handling corruption cases in the future.
It is true that the time for quarreling is over and they should from now on look to the future and cooperate on a common and united front against the rampant corruption in the country.
However, their cooperation should take the form of joining hands in uncovering the truth and upholding justice — and not the contrary.
Otherwise, all the anticorruption measures will go back to square one, with the country remaining in the top three of the world’s most corrupt countries. And that goes exactly counter to the reasons behind the establishment of the KPK or the National Police or the Attorney General’s Office.
