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Indonesia prides itself on its post-Soeharto democratic reform, but the regime's legacy of corruption still exists today, in no small part because of our unscrupulous, lackluster law enforcement.
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Gotcha! (finally): Corruption convict Adelin Lis appears at a press conference held at the Attorney General’s Office on June 19, 2021, after state prosecutors repatriated the fugitive from Singapore. Adeline spent 13 years on the lam since fleeing Indonesia in 2008. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak )
T
hat a number of convicted criminals have escaped justice by fleeing the country unhindered is undeniable evidence of the country’s messy and unscrupulous law enforcement. And sadly, this mockery of the supremacy of law will drag on for years, if not decades, because the ongoing improvement measures are just a patchwork repair of a frail system.
Indonesia prides itself as the world’s third largest democracy after India and the United States, but it is among the league of the worst in terms of corruption eradication. The Soeharto era came to an end in 1998, but its legacy of a corrupt system has remained intact.
Reborn as post-Soeharto Indonesia, the country declared a fight against corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN) and all kinds of evil acts. But after more than 23 years of reform, we have to acknowledge that corruption, abuse of power and oligarchic practices in politics and the economy are by no means gone. Just look at the cases of Adelin Lis and Djoko S. Tjandra, two fugitive graft convicts who were captured after years of demonstrable contempt for our justice system.
Adelin, wanted for corruption and illegal logging, was repatriated on Saturday from Singapore to Jakarta after hiding out overseas since 2008. Ironically, he was caught not because of the hard work of the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), but thanks primarily to a tip-off from Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).
Starting in May 2018, the ICA sent four notification letters to the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore to seek clarification over the true identity of Adelin, who had entered Singapore using two different names. The embassy finally responded three years later on March 4, 2021, and Adelin is now in the AGO’s custody.
Djoko, meanwhile, went through a more dramatic adventure. He fled to Papua New Guinea in June 2009, just one day before the Supreme Court sentenced him to two years in prison and ordered him to return Rp 546 billion (US$38.7 million today) that he had stolen from the state.
After 11 years on the lam, he could no longer resist his homesickness, so he paid a junior AGO official $500,000 out of $1 million last year in exchange for her to arrange a Supreme Court acquittal for him. He also bribed two police generals to facilitate his surreptitious return to Jakarta. He was finally arrested and repatriated from Kuala Lumpur in July 2020.
Adelin and Djoko are just two of the 95 fugitive convicts that the AGO has captured in the past year alone. We don’t know exactly how many criminals are on the wanted list and what the government is doing to enforce the law against them. But we know it is impossible for fugitives to escape the law without collaborating with those in the justice system, and that bribery is the most effective way to bend the law in their favor.
We must thank Singapore in Adelin’s case. Indonesia has long accused the neighboring island state of harboring Indonesian corruptors, but why did it take us three years to finally respond to the ICA’s notifices?
We have nobody but ourselves to blame for this mess. While we have put up a front as a democratic and moral nation, the world perceives us as one of the most corrupt nations. Shame on us!
