W

e are flabbergasted by President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s hasty decision to nominate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as the sole candidate for National Police chief, replacing Gen. Sutarman, who is to retire in October.

The question is why Jokowi felt it so urgent to replace Sutarman, who has led the police for only around 18 months and who, to our knowledge, has not committed any major violations of the law to justify his replacement almost 10 months before his retirement age.

Even more mind-boggling is why Jokowi nominated Budi, whose integrity has been severely in doubt since 2010; reports from the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) of suspicious transactions through his bank accounts and those of his family involving almost Rp 100 billion have never been cleared by an independent institution.

Also worrisome is the question of whose influence has been so powerful that Jokowi has been forced to compromise on or entirely disregard his basic principle of impeccable integrity, exempting Budi from the screening process at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and PPATK. Such screening was compulsory for all candidates for his Cabinet.

Budi was an adjutant to then president Megawati Soekarnoputri from 2001 to 2004. Megawati is the current chief of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which sponsored Jokowi'€™s presidential bid.

Then National Police chief detective Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi did say in June 2010 that Rp 95 billion (US$10.35 million) in two bank accounts reportedly owned by then police Insp. Gen. Budi Gunawan had been found to be legitimate wealth built up over the years by businesses run by him and his family.

But this clarification had many holes and was in effect rather meaningless since the examination was done only by the police. What made the police'€™s clearance of Budi even more questionable was that tax auditors had not been involved in examining the huge sums of money flowing into Gunawan'€™s bank accounts and those of his son.

We wonder what kind of business Budi and his family had been engaged in that could have generated such huge profits. Moreover, if their businesses had been so greatly profitable, were their financial statements audited by tax officials and did they pay the proper amount of income tax on those earnings? These questions have never been answered by the police.

In early 2011, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) demanded that the Central Information Commission (KIP) force the National Police to disclose to the public the details of the suspicious bank accounts of Budi and several other police officers. The KIP ruled in favor of ICW, but the National Police simply ignored the ruling.

We therefore urge the House of Representatives to involve the KPK, the PPATK and tax auditors in the process of clearing him for the role of police chief, who, together with the attorney general, leads law enforcement. Without independent clearance, doubts will continue to linger over Budi'€™s integrity, a fundamental requirement for the job of chief law enforcer.