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Quo vadis National Police chief?
The late former president Abdurrahman âGus Durâ Wahid once jested that only three police figures in the country were resistant to bribery: Hoegeng Imam Santoso, the Indonesian police chief in the mid-1960s known for his integrity; roadside police statues; and polisi tidur (sleeping police), a term for speed bumps
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The late former president Abdurrahman 'Gus Dur' Wahid once jested that only three police figures in the country were resistant to bribery: Hoegeng Imam Santoso, the Indonesian police chief in the mid-1960s known for his integrity; roadside police statues; and polisi tidur (sleeping police), a term for speed bumps.
With Indonesia struggling to reform the National Police, the bad news came that the sole candidate that President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo had picked to lead the law enforcement agency was a graft suspect.
The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said on Tuesday that Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan would be charged with accepting bribes and gratuities in 2003-2006. This deals a big blow to Jokowi's commitment to a clean government.
It will be hard for the public to expect a total reform of the police force if its chief is dogged by corruption charges.
Budi's nomination, let alone his inauguration, as the National Police chief stands to damage not only the police's reputation, but also its professionalism; if the KPK detains Budi, he will be unable to perform his duties.
The police force has become infamous for its vulnerability to corruption, and if the wrong man heads the institution the condition will worsen.
The worst, however, will come when Jokowi installs Budi as the new police chief. It will cost him his popularity capital and exhaust public trust in him within just the first 100 days of his term, at a time when he will need it for a number of unpopular policies urgently needed to save the country from global economic crisis.
If the trust is gone, a calamity will follow.
In one of his dialogs with his students in Analects, Confucius states that in order to rule a nation, one needs sufficient food supplies for the people, sufficient military presence and public trust in the rulers.
If any of these has to be scrapped, start with the military presence and then the food supplies.
Confucius adds, 'Do away with the food supplies, because in any case men have to die one day, but if the ruler has lost his people's trust, the nation shall fall.'
The National Police chief is not only an administrative position to manage the police force, but also a symbol of justice.
Most importantly, the police chief is the President's partner in realizing the vision of clean government.
As Randy S. Belasic says in Police Integrity in Law Enforcement: Are We Really Doing Enough?, police as law enforcement officers are the summit of integrity, thus they are bound to higher ethical standards in both their work and personal lives. The higher the ethical values, the lower the chance of corruption and vice versa.
Even though people have their own individual moral principles, law enforcement institutions like the police in particular require their members as a whole to maintain incorruptible integrity.
When compared with the people they serve, police officers are held to higher standards in their work and personal lives.
The solution to this peril is a role model to establish and maintain the culture of integrity within the force. Therefore, we cannot endorse a nomination based solely on the principle of presumption of innocence, since as the National Police chief requires a higher standard, his track record must be unstained.
We cannot take the risk of having, for the first time in our history, a National Police chief arrested for graft. We already have seen the first Constitutional Court chief and political party chairman go down that ugly path.
The selection of the National Police chief relates not only to legal terms but also to the political and economic landscapes.
Our economic agenda, development programs and all campaign promises will be in vain without a healthy legal environment.
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The police chief is not only an administrative position, but also a symbol of justice
The writer is a lawyer at a Jakarta law firm and a graduate of Gadjah Mada University School of Law in Yogyakarta.
