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The week in review: Freeportgate showdown

JP/DonPolitical tension over the 2021 Freeport Indonesia contract extension brokerage scandal involving House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto continues to build up with rival political parties readying for a showdown this week

The Jakarta Post
Sun, November 29, 2015

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The week in review: Freeportgate showdown

JP/Don

Political tension over the 2021 Freeport Indonesia contract extension brokerage scandal involving House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto continues to build up with rival political parties readying for a showdown this week.

Key political parties, Setya'€™s Golkar Party and the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) have consolidated, replacing their representatives on the House'€™s ethics council with tougher negotiators for the upcoming sessions that will decide on Setya'€™s fate.

The ethics council'€™s initial sessions have been marred by disagreement on technical trivialities. Council members from the Red-and-White Coalition of opposition parties backing Setya have been trying to foil hearings, questioning whether Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said had the legal standing to file the report on the scandal in the first place.

They questioned the veracity and legality of the transcript of the recording of the conversation involving Setya, Freeport president director Maroef Sjamsoedin and oil tycoon Muhammad Reza Chalid that Sudirman submitted as evidence with the backing of Vice President Jusuf Kalla.

'€œFreeportgate'€ exploded after Sudirman filed his report with the ethics council, alleging that Setya had asked Freeport for a 20 percent shareholding on behalf of President Joko '€œJokowi '€œ Widodo and Kalla as a condition for a contract extension in 2021. Setya also offered support to Freeport to finance the Rp 56 billion (US$4 million) hydropower project in Urumuka, Papua, and in return he sought a 49 percent shareholding, the transcript allegedly shows.

Setya has denied the substance of the recording, which has been made public by the media. His arguments, which have been built on technicalities such as '€œincomplete recording'€, the identity of the person who recorded the conversation and Sudirman'€™s legal standing, have only added fuel to the fire.

Anticorruption activists have launched at least three online petitions and collected 120,000 signatures to add pressure on the council to sanction Setya. There has been a mounting call for his dismissal and criminal prosecution for his claim to be acting on behalf of Jokowi and Kalla.

Public resentment with Setya and the House is rising now because only last month, the ethics council issued a mere verbal warning for Setya who claimed to have represented the people of Indonesia when attending Donald Trump'€™s presidential campaign as a gesture of support.

Setya, a former Golkar treasurer who has been implicated in several cases of corruption, has secured strong support from the Red and White Coalition, which has vowed to do everything to keep him at the helm. In the other corner, spearheaded by the PDI-P, the Great Indonesia Coalition has promised to seek sanctions of '€œmoderate severity'€, which translates as Setya'€™s dismissal from the House.

Caving in to strong public pressure, the council will conduct Freeportgate hearings in public, but only on condition that the interviewees have no objection to it. The ethics council will have to prove its credibility.

***

The House is taking the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) hostage '€” again. It is ignoring the people'€™s wish to immediately select five of the 10 names the President submitted in September as the new KPK leaders. Our lawmakers keep dragging their feet for no apparent reason when they should have raced against time as the incumbent KPK leaders'€™ terms will expire on Dec. 16 '€” just a little over two weeks from now.

Lawmakers in charge of conducting the selection procedure for the candidates have four times summoned the nine all-women KPK leadership selection team for hearings but they are yet to decide if or when they will interview the candidates. Instead, the legislators keep finding faults with the President'€™s commissioned team. In short, they have questioned the 10 candidates'€™ competence and integrity and considered rejecting the nominees.

They have hindered the process by questioning the technicalities that the team had carried out in selecting the candidates, demanding that the team submit the personal records of each of the nominees and questioning why no representatives from the Attorney General Office qualified.

The lawmakers'€™ are overly demanding. The laws prescribe that the House members'€™ job in this regard is simply selecting five of the 10 candidates that the President has submitted while the recruitment technicalities are the team'€™s domain.

The impasse has raised fears that the KPK leaders'€™ selection will miss the Dec. 16 deadline. If that happens, the antigraft body will be practically crippled, leaving the 195 cases it is currently handling in limbo. That'€™s why many have called on President Jokowi to draft a regulation in lieu of law for a worst-case scenario just to keep the KPK functional until the definitive leaders are in place.

The lawmakers'€™ reluctance has only aggravated public distrust in the legislative body'€™s political commitment to corruption eradication efforts, let alone the fact that scores of lawmakers have been convicted of graft.

The lawmakers have been trying hard to steal every chance to alter the 2002 Corruption Law with the aim of weakening and eventually destroying it. The current deadlock could be part of the House'€™s effort to force the amendments, which have met with strong public resistance. If they get their way, the legislators will select the leaders only after the law is revised.

'€” JP/Pandaya

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