Antigraft activists have urged the Bank Century inquiry committee at the House of Representatives and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to keep right on probing the case to the end of the road.
“We see that there is a glimmer of hope that the debacle may be resolved, however, this is not
very likely,” spokesperson of the Coalition of Anticorruption Civil Society (Kompak) Effendi Gazali told a press conference at the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Monday.
“Therefore, the committee and the KPK must do their best not to let personal issues between certain individuals divert them from their objective to get to the bottom of the story,” he added.
The committee’s investigations in recent weeks, at times, have been marked by tantrums among its members, particularly by legislators from the Golkar Party, reacting against Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, who many have considered to be one of the individuals taking the most responsibility for the decision to salvage the bank with a final bailout cost of Rp 6.76 trillion (US$716.56 million). The bailout turned out to cost a lot higher than the less than Rp 1 trillion first reported to and agreed by the House.
Mulyani told The Wall Street Journal recently that she believed Golkar members would not treat her fairly because their chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, was not happy with her due to past grudges against her.
Some legislators also thought that Mulyani might have launched a personal vendetta when the tax office, over which she has authority, reportedly began probing some committee members’ tax filings.
The KPK has also faced another possible diversion since its wiretapping authority might be limited after Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring recently proposed a revision to a regulation that could curtail this authority.
“We demand that the minister stop deliberating the revision. If he continues, then we can say that he is nothing but a representative of corruptors,” a Kompak activist, Ray Rangkuti, said.
In the midst of the Bank Century investigation, a committee member from the Democratic Party, Ruhut Sitompul, then said, apparently out of the blue, that he had received solid intelligence information that the anticorruption civil society movement had been financially backed by two former ministers, who held a grudge against President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Commenting on Ruhut’s remark, Usman Hamid from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), a civil group affiliated with Kompak, said that this was baseless and not true.
“We are a coalition of academicians, public advocates, students, national leaders, and religious leaders. We do not have any affiliated ties with any political figures or parties,” he said.
“We are not going to let ourselves be exploited by anyone as a mere tool for a personal political vendetta. Our goals are only to ensure the improvement of the nation’s livelihood, because the country is now under an emergency situation in terms of corruption eradication and justice,”
he added.
Usman also said that Ruhut should instead reflect on Yudhoyono’s actions in the past.
“SBY [Yudhoyono] once betrayed his own president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, by resigning from his ministerial post when his term was not finished yet. That means, SBY managed to set a good example on how to do a betrayal,” he said.
Usman was refering to Yudhoyono’s decision to resign from his position as coordinating minister for political, law, and security affairs during the presidency of Megawati. Yudhoyono then challenged his former boss in the 2004 presidential election and managed to win.
For the near future, Effendi said that Kompak would launch an event to further celebrate the anticorruption spirit on Dec. 27.
“We are also going to formally invite the President, his family and his closest aides to attend the event and to celebrate with us,” he said.
