Many of us have witnessed how some legislators in the House of Representatives’ inquiry committee on the Bank Century bailout scandal were lacking of decorum and ethics when questioning some key witnesses, even when the witness happened to be the serving vice president.
Maruarar Sirait of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), for example, raised his voice at Vice President Boediono on Tuesday when the latter answered a question from another legislator by advising him to ask a legal expert about the legality of the Coordination Committee.
Even when questioning Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati on Wednesday, Maruarar looked like a police investigator interrogating a criminal. A similar tone of questioning was presented by Akbar Faisal from the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), which partnered with PDI-P to form a coalition bloc at the House.
However, it is not only legislators from the opposition who acted obnoxiously. Ruhut Sitompul from the ruling Democratic Party, for example, treated former vice president Jusuf Kalla with little respect during their argument Thursday.
Earlier, Ruhut was involved in a poorly mannered debate with inquiry committee deputy chairman Gayus Lumbuun of the PDI-P. Ruhut called Gayus a “bastard” after the former was displeased with the latter’s approach to leading the inquiry.
These legislators have practically turned the inquiry process into a form of criminal interrogation.
Sadly, most of these sessions were broadcast live, allowing the public to witness their disrespectful behavior with their own eyes.
We remain puzzled as to why these legislators behave so badly, reducing their session to a tantrum before the cameras during the inquiry session. Were they trying to build their reputation before the public through live broadcasts in order to ease their climb up the ladder of their political careers? Or, were they acting like that based on orders from their superiors or somebody else more powerful?
We will never know the real reason. But judging from the way the inquiry has been carried out so far, we can sense that these people are not really searching for the truth behind the Bank Century case. Instead it seems that they are just trying to inflict damage on the government and certain public officials, especially Boediono and Sri Mulyani.
In most cases, they just want to hear answers that please them but do not want to hear answers that they do not like. Therefore, these legislators were easily agitated during the inquiry sessions with Boediono and Sri Mulyani because they were pained to hear both officials’ honest answers.
Both Boediono and Mulyani maintained that bailing out the trouble-ridden Bank Century amid the 2008 global financial crisis was the right decision to save the banking sector and the economy from collapse because letting it fold could have created a systemic effect in the banking industry.
Most legislators on the inquiry team, however, do not want to hear that kind of answer. They would rather hear answers from people like convicted corruptor and former Bank Indonesia governor Burhanuddin Abdullah and former Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor Anwar Nasution.
Both said Bank Century was a too small bank to create a systemic effect. But these people were outsiders when the decision was made and could in no way have accurately gauged the situation.
The inquiry team will also hear testimonies from expert witnesses, but the majority of expert witnesses invited are those that the legislators want to hear from. Most brazenly though, the inquiry team has no intention at all to summon bankers, who really felt firsthand the tremors of a near-crisis situation in the financial sector at the time when the decision was made to bail out the bank.
If the intention is to sling as much mud as possible at our most credible and clean public officials, we should not expect much from this inquiry committee in getting to the bottom of the case.
It will only be a waste of energy and resources, will keep foreign investors at bay and could eventually affect our economic performance.
