T

he Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) said on Tuesday that a joint anticorruption task force involving the AGO, National Police and Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had been established to put an end to rumors of conflict between the three law enforcement agencies.

While the establishment was announced on Monday afternoon following a closed-door meeting between the leaders of the three institutions, AGO spokesman Tony T. Spontana said that it was Attorney General M. Prasetyo who had come up with the idea.

'€œThe attorney general proactively suggested setting up the task force, casually over lunch. I think it'€™s a good idea because we can show the public that [the three institutions] are solid, cooperate with each other and have a harmonious relationship,'€ he told reporters, adding that the three bodies were aware of the public'€™s dwindling confidence in the government'€™s ability to eradicate graft.

Although all three bodies have insisted that their relationship is amiable, many speculate that a rift opened up following the KPK'€™s decision to name Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, now the deputy National Police chief, a graft suspect.

Following the KPK'€™s move, KPK commissioners Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto were named suspects in separate criminal cases and subsequently suspended. Meanwhile, the antigraft body'€™s top investigator, Novel Baswedan, only escaped detention last Saturday as an assault suspect after three acting KPK commissioners '€” Taufiequ-rachman Ruki, Indriyanto Seno Adji and Johan Budi '€” personally asked National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti to release him.

Budi'€™s case remains in limbo following the South Jakarta District Court'€™s decision to annul his suspect status in February. The KPK was forced in March to hand over Budi'€™s case dossier to the AGO, which subsequently transferred it to the National Police in April citing reasons of efficiency.

The police have yet to announce whether they will continue investigating Budi'€™s case.

The establishment of the task force, Tony said, would help avoid future conflicts between the three institutions.

'€œ[However] the joint task force is situational and temporary. It will only be convened for certain major cases,'€ he said. Tony acknowledged that the three institutions had yet to discuss the details of the task force, but said that they had agreed to conduct a joint review of the report filed by Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama on alleged mark-ups in Jakarta'€™s draft 2015 budget.

Meanwhile, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Lola Easter told The Jakarta Post that she saw no need for a joint task force given that the three institutions had already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on anticorruption efforts in 2012.

'€œThe existing MoU states that they may coordinate with each other in order to solve cases and take advantage of the different abilities of each institution'€™s investigators,'€ she said on Tuesday.