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Police urged to obey Jokowi'€™s order

Stop criminalization of KPK: Bambang Widjojanto (center), the non-active deputy chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), former deputy law and human rights minister Denny Indrayana (right) and former chief of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) Yunus Husein (left) attend a press conference after they meet State Secretariat staff in Jakarta on Friday

Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, March 7, 2015

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Police urged to obey Jokowi'€™s order

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span class="inline inline-center">Stop criminalization of KPK: Bambang Widjojanto (center), the non-active deputy chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), former deputy law and human rights minister Denny Indrayana (right) and former chief of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) Yunus Husein (left) attend a press conference after they meet State Secretariat staff in Jakarta on Friday. The trio hoped that the deputy chief of the National Police, Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti, would comply with President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™ s order to stop criminalizing the KPK. Antara/Alfiansyah

Suspended Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto and antigraft activists have stepped up their demand for the National Police to comply with President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s instruction to halt the prosecution of individuals involved in the fight against corruption.

Bambang, along with former Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) chairman Yunus Husein, former law and human rights deputy minister Denny Indrayana and a number of antigraft activists, visited the State Secretariat on Friday to seek confirmation that Jokowi had indeed made the order through State Secretary Pratikno.

Pratikno said on Thursday that Jokowi'€™s goodwill should not be in doubt, insisting that since the beginning, the President had called for an end to the prosecution of antigraft campaigners.

After meeting with officials from the State Secretariat, Bambang called on deputy National Police chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti, who is temporarily in charge of the police force, '€œto follow up what has been started by the President through the State Secretary'€.

The group also handed a letter to Jokowi expressing activists'€™ grievances over what they described as the '€œcriminalization'€ of anticorruption partisans.

Attacks on the KPK intensified after the commission named Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, who was earlier nominated to be National Police chief, a graft suspect. Budi is a former confidant of Jokowi'€™s patron and chairwoman of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Megawati Soekarnoputri.

The National Police is pressing ahead with its investigations into Bambang, Yunus and suspended KPK chairman Abraham Samad for allegedly divulging state secrets by exposing the contents of Budi'€™s bank accounts following a report filed by the Indonesian General Society Movement (GMBI) and Budi'€™s lawyer Razman Nasution.

The GMBI has also filed a report against Tempo magazine over an article on Budi'€™s suspiciously large bank accounts in the weekly'€™s Jan. 19-25 edition. The complaint is being processed by the police, who have ignored a recommendation from the Press Council to allow the council to mediate.

The GMBI alleges that by revealing the flow of funds, the magazine had divulged state secrets and violated both the 1998 Banking Law and the 2010 Money-Laundering Law.

Abraham and Bambang have furthermore been named suspects by police in an array of petty criminal cases.

Meanwhile, Denny has been reported by a group calling themselves the Defenders of the Country'€™s Unity (PEKAT) to the West Jakarta Police for defaming Budi.

Following the arrest of Bambang in early February, Denny made a statement saying that by filing a pretrial motion at the South Jakarta District Court, Budi Gunawan had made a '€œsilly move'€.

Denny added that the police should not process the reports against him and other antigraft activists.

'€œWe are waiting for the police'€™s next step. They should comply with the President'€™s order,'€ Denny said.

Other than processing the report against his statements, the police also plan to question Denny as a witness in an alleged graft case involving a payment gateway, an online passport-application service originally launched on July 14 last year when Denny was a deputy minister.

The program was suddenly halted in October last year after the ministry said that it had yet to issue the authorization for the project to start.

'€œIt was an effort of mine to cut red tape,'€ Denny said in his defense.

A number of independent press associations have in the meantime called on Jokowi to take action to stop such criminalization of the media by the police.

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