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orruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chairman Agus Rahardjo was quick to challenge the acquittal of suspended Rokan Hulu regent Suparman of all corruption charges handed down by the Pekanbaru Corruption Court in Riau, saying the commission would immediately file an appeal.

The move was necessary for the antigraft body to maintain its 100 percent conviction rate since it was established in 2003.

Agus said the KPK would challenge the verdict by filing a cassation plea with the Supreme Court.

“We will file the cassation plea just like what we did in the case of former Bekasi mayor,” Agus told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

He was referring to former Bekasi mayor Mochtar Muhammad who had initially been acquitted by the Bandung Corruption Court in West Java in 2011. It was the first time a KPK suspect was acquitted by a court.

The KPK had filed a cassation with the Supreme Court, which overturned the verdict and sentenced Mochtar to six years in jail in 2012 for embezzling funds from the Bekasi local budget.

Agus said he was optimistic the Supreme Court would ultimately find the suspended regent guilty.

KPK deputy chairman Laode M. Syarif, meanwhile, said that he would convene KPK investigators and prosecutors to examine the verdict in order to find out what arguments they could bring to the Supreme Court in the appeal against Suparman.

“First, we have to study the verdict carefully,” he told the Post.

Earlier on Thursday, the judges at the Pekanbaru Corruption Court acquitted Suparman from graft charges after he had initially been indicted for alleged bribery between 2014 and 2015.

Presiding judge Rinaldi Triandoko said the panel of judge’s examination into Suparman’s case had found no evidence that the latter had violated Article 12 of the Corruption Law as demanded by KPK prosecutors.

“The defendant has not been proven of receiving bribes from Annas Ma’mun as stated in the indictment,” Rinaldi said, adding that evidence provided by KPK prosecutors during the hearings were weak.

KPK prosecutors initially indicted Suparman of receiving bribes from former Riau governor Annas Ma’mun, who had earlier been convicted in the case, as part of Annas’ attempt to speed up the deliberation of Riau budgets at the Riau Provincial Legislative Council between 2014 and 2015.

Suparman was then a member of the province’s legislative council between 2009 and 2014. He was elected as Rokan Hulu regent in the regental election on Dec. 9, 2015. Seven months later, he was detained by the KPK.

The court ordered the anti-corruption body to release Suparman from detention.

The acquittal, however, was controversial given the decision by the same court that found Suparman’s fellow then member of Riau Legislative Council and the council’s speaker Johar Firdaus guilty of receiving bribes from Ma’mun in the same case. Johar was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Aradilla Caesar said that he was surprised to learn that the same court issued two different rulings in the same case, adding that the KPK should read the guilty verdict carefully in order to find any possible irregularities.