Pandaya, Jakarta – The police's threat to sue Tempo magazine over its piggy bank cover is both amusing and intimidating at the same time, although it's possible that they are only sounding public reaction now when they are desperately struggling to shed their image as a corrupt force.

People with a good sense of humor will not be able to help but laugh on hearing police officers say that the whole force is irritated by Tempo's cover illustration of a fat officer playing with fat piggy banks.

"Tempo compares the police with animals while it means to target only a few allegedly corrupt individuals among 406,000 police officers nationwide," said National Police spokesman Edward Aritonang.

As we know, the pig is generally considered a religiously dirty animal by Muslims who constitute the overwhelming majority of the country's 235 million, and its meat is deemed haram.

But everybody knows that the cute fat piggy bank is a universal deposit box, which has been in use long before mankind created the bank.

Would it make a different story if Tempo had used a "rooster bank", which is an equally popular alternative to the piggy bank because the rooster symbolizes courage (and good food)? God knows.

But for those familiar with the way Indonesian public officials – the police included – only know well that the police use the very funny joke to cover up their common fear that the constant exposure of corruption within the institution would snowball.

It is foolish to assume that the police do not know how facetious it would be to make an issue of a caricature. It would not need a rocket scientist to judge that the police terribly missed the moral of the story: That the public as represented by the media want the police to clean up its house.

The police, along with the judiciary system, the House of Representatives and political parties have time and again topped the Transparency International-Indonesia's list of most perceived corrupt institutions. Conspiracy theory is swirling around that the information about the officers' fat accounts might have been leaked from the PPATK (Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center) report by some rival officers who will vie for the soon-to-be vacant chieftain post.

A recent revelation by the PPATK that more than a dozen senior officers have stashed suspicious billions of rupiahs in their bank account, has only added credence to the common perception about corruption in the police force.

So anti-corruption activists are right when they question why the police make an issue of the caricature and find Tempo's sources instead of looking into the substance of the story – that they should let other institutions like the Corruption eradication Commission (KPK) investigate the allegations that the institution is corrupt to the core.

It's good to hear that the police have examined 21 of some 60 cases of officers' suspicious accounts as reported by the PPATK, but big doubts remain as to their sincerity when alleged corruption within the police is investigated by the police themselves.

Of course taking the magazine to court is perfectly acceptable so long as the principle of fair play is upheld. Just imagine who would believe the principle is honored if the police investigate a person or an organization they accused?

Besides, a legal action may hit back the police like a boomerang now when the institution is under an intense public spotlight for corruption in the case of Gayus Tambunan, a tax employee who stashed Rp 100 billion and revealed that some officers had had their share of the ill-gotten cash.

The police reactive move also amounts to intimidation to the freedom of the press, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.

A burst of anger came Wednesday from national police's head of public information Sr. Comr. Marwoto Soeto. He vowed the police would bring the case straight to court instead of filing a complaint with the press council, as the law recommends, and ignored calls for the police to exercise their right to clarify themselves because Tempo had repeatedly "insulted" his institution.

Interestingly, none of the senior officers who expressed their anger explicitly raised objection to the editorial content of the report. The police should put their house in order instead of eyeballing whoever is trying to help them put their house in order.