Robert Go, Jakarta – The judges heaved a sigh of relief, the prosecutors claimed justice had been done, the defence lawyers cried foul, but the media responded to Friday's guilty verdict and the 15-year sentence against former president Suharto's favourite son with plenty of scepticism.
Doubters have many valid reasons to think that nothing has changed and to posit that Tommy Suharto could in the end get off lightly.
All this despite enormous attention to the case given by the wong cilik, the little people, millions of whom were glued to TV sets to watch the spectacle of judgment against one of the former elites, and media organisations, both domestic and foreign.
The English-language daily The Jakarta Post ran an editorial titled "Justice on trial" and called the case "the highest-profile litmus test of the integrity of the Indonesian legal system. On its final outcome will rest much of the reputation of the Indonesian judiciary." The daily also talked of the gaping disparity between the life-imprisonment punishment meted out to the two trigger men who killed Judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita and the relatively lighter sentence given to Tommy.
"Many, if not most, Indonesians were appalled earlier by the public prosecutor's demand for a mere 15 years' imprisonment for Tommy." "This huge disparity was enough to raise immediate suspicions of a conspiracy between the judges and Tommy's defence lawyers, either for the judges' material gain or personal safety," The Post wrote.
Other editorials and articles focused on the potential loophole created by Friday's event that could have given Tommy's defence team a reasonably solid basis for an appeal.
Koran Tempo, the daily newspaper put out by the publisher of the Tempo weekly magazine, featured Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Mangkoedilaga's support for Central Jakarta Court judges' decision to go on with the verdict despite Tommy's absence, supposedly due to stomach problems and dizziness.
But Media Indonesia – whose parent company also runs a major television station that broadcast Friday's entire proceedings – called Indonesia's legal system a "jungle of arguments", where court officials often interpret the law book as it suited their needs.
"Tommy's case is not a simulation trial, not a case that has come down from the sky, and not a theoretical case wherein its particulars feed academic discussions," it said.
It also made the point that the current sentence is 10 times heavier than a previous judgment of 18 months in jail, given to him following a corruption conviction.
The paper asked: "If he ran away when given a much lighter punishment, what will happen now when he's facing a harsher sentence?" "For Tommy, it is now time for him to show that he abides the law and that he is not a coward who would choose to run or cower behind a facade of sickness," it said.
But perhaps the harshest sentiment, the one that could reflect the views of millions of poor Indonesians – that the reform process, which supposedly began in 1998 with the downfall of Suharto, is either stalled or never got off the ground – appeared within the pages of Rakyat Merdeka.
Its Page 4 story and graphic depicted a smiling Tommy holding a gun and likened him to Chicago mafia-boss Al Capone.
Rakyat said: "Although the verdict has been given, it doesn't mean that law enforcer and court officials' jobs are finished – people who are loyal to the Suharto family and the New Order regime still have many options.
"The people demand to see if the reform agenda has truly been implemented. In reality, there are plenty of indications that violations occur everywhere. There are even indications that elements of the New Order are trying hard to return Suharto to his glory days.