Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) leaders are split over a plan to arrest Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum and Sports and Youth Minister Andi Mallarangeng, an internal source at the party says.
KPK chief Abraham Samad has reportedly issued a warrant to arrest Anas and Andi because both have been named suspects in the SEA Games graft scandal.
However, KPK deputies Bambang Widjojanto and Busyro Muqoddas refused to sign the warrant.
“Bambang and Busyro suggested that the KPK delay the arrest and refused to sign the warrant,” the source, who declined to be named, said Thursday.
The source said that a meeting in Cikeas, West Java, on Tuesday, of party elite members of the Democratic Party including its chief patron President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was aimed to discuss the antigraft body’s plan to arrest the two politicians.
Abraham said that this was false, and that the KPK leaders remained undivided.
“We are still united,” he said.
Abraham also dismissed as false a rumor that the commission was waiting for a nod from the State Palace to arrest both of the ruling party’s senior officials.
“The arrest has nothing to do with the palace’s approval. The KPK is an independent body that needs [at least] two kinds of proper evidence before naming someone a suspect,” Abraham said, adding that the KPK was still studying the case.
Several Democratic Party elite members, including party deputy secretary-general Angelina Sondakh and former party treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin, are implicated in the prolonged graft case, after sports and youth ministry secretary Wafid Muharram was caught red-handed last year by the KPK while accepting bribes from businessman Muhammad El Idris and middleman Mindo Rosalina in exchange for their awarding a certain company a contract to build the SEA Games athlete’s dormitory in Palembang, South Sumatra. (swd/mtq)
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