The internal dispute emerged between KPK leadership and their investigators over the weekend after deputy chairman Johanis Tanak publicly apologized for naming two soldiers at Basarnas, its head and a subordinate, suspects after a group of military officers visited the KPK headquarters. Johanis had also shifted the blame, saying investigators had "made a mistake and forgot that military police must be involved in a graft investigation involving military personnel”.

KPK deputy chairman Alexander Marwata said on Monday that the dispute had now been resolved after the five leaders, including controversial chairman Firli Bahuri, met with 300 employees to apologize for shifting the blame onto KPK investigators and admitted that it was the leaders who made the mistakes.

Alexander also said the leaders had no plan to resign from their posts before their tenure ended in December next year.

“We assure the KPK employees that the leaders will be more solid and we will not step down before our tenure ends,” Alexander said.

Out of disappointment with the KPK leadership, investigations director Asep Guntur Rahayu, a police brigadier general, filed his resignation letter also on Monday.

And although the five leaders have apologized to their employees for the wrong move, public calls for the accountability of the five KPK leaders remain intensive to date.

 Activist Boyamin Saiman of the Indonesian Anticorruption Community (MAKI) said the KPK leaders had committed two mistakes: announcing the military members as suspects without having a warrant ready and blaming their investigators for the error.

He plans to report the five KPK leaders to the supervisory board on Wednesday.

Mochamad Praswad Nugraha of the IM57+, an antigraft watchdog group established by former KPK employees, said the KPK leaders failed to be role models for the employees.

“And this is not the first time. Under Firli's leadership, KPK leaders have been repeatedly embroiled in controversy,” he said.

Former deputy KPK chairman Bambang Widjojanto, who is now a law lecturer, urged the KPK leaders to step down even after they claimed that the internal dispute was over, saying this was only the latest controversy to hit the KPK under Firli's chairmanship.

The KPK has seen a slew of controversies since Firli took charge in 2019, from a widely criticized civic knowledge test that was used to justify the firing of dozens of KPK employees in 2021, including seasoned KPK investigator Novel Baswedan, to the recent allegations of embezzlement, bribe-taking and sexual harassment at the institution.

Firli himself was found to have violated ethical rules as KPK deputy for enforcement in 2018 for meeting with then-West Nusa Tenggara governor Zainul Majdi, who at the time was a witness in a corruption case. Firli was recalled to the police force before the KPK imposed sanctions.

Earlier this year, activists and former KPK leaders called for Firli’s removal after his controversial dismissal of Endar Priatoro, a police brigadier general previously stationed as the KPK’s investigations director, and Firli’s alleged leaking of official documents to the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, which at the time was the subject of a KPK probe.

But Firli survived the scandal after the KPK supervisory board dropped its ethics probe into him, citing insufficient evidence.

Johanis, who only joined the KPK leadership late last year, is no less controversial. He is currently undergoing an ethics hearing for allegedly communicating with a person of interest in a KPK investigation.

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