Ezra Sihite – A hearing on the contentious new policy to deny sentence cuts to corruption convicts turned ugly on Wednesday with a legislator losing his temper at Justice Minister Amir Syamsuddin.
The hearing between Amir, his deputy, Denny Indrayana, and House of Representatives Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, quickly deteriorated into a shouting match over the decision in late October to quash the early release of former Golkar Party legislator Paskah Suzetta by rescinding a remission granted to the graft convict.
Azis Syamsuddin, a Commission III legislator from Golkar, repeatedly laid into Amir over the last-minute decision, at one point suggesting that it was a deliberately calculated attack on Golkar by the minister from the ruling Democratic Party.
He said the most jarring aspect of the issue was that Paskah had been returned to prison immediately upon his release on Oct. 30, whereas the ministry's official letter on the moratorium had been issued on Nov. 16.
"If this is true, we demand full accountability in the form of the firing of the director general of corrections and the chief warden of Cipinang Penitentiary," Azis said.
When Amir tried to respond by asking Azis to hear him out, the legislator lashed out at him. "We can all hear you. You don't have to ask for our attention. Please check yourself. If you want to argue, I can argue too," he said.
Azis then flared up further when Denny whispered something to Amir. "Deputy minister, stop whispering," he shouted. "I didn't give you permission to whisper. If you don't like it, you're welcome to leave." Denny was later ejected from the hearing after again whispering to Amir.
Earlier in the hearing, Amir acknowledged that the order to re-incarcerate Paskah lacked an official written letter, but was justifiable under the law.
"The order [for the moratorium] was indeed just a policy idea at that point and was not supported by a formal decision," he said in response to a question from Trimedya Panjaitan, a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
He also confirmed that the order to jail Paskah upon his release had been issued over the phone by Denny, which prompted rumblings among the commission members.
However, Amir insisted there was a valid legal basis for the move, namely a 2006 government regulation on release restrictions for those convicted of terrorism, drug offenses, corruption and transnational crimes.
"If we only apply these bans on early release on terrorists and drug offenders, is that not a miscarriage of justice? The government regulation applies to all perpetrators of these special crimes," he said.
Amir also denied accusations that Paskah was deliberately singled out for political interests. "There are no political motives driving our work. We don't target particular individuals for denial of early release. If there's this assumption that we did it to gain popularity, rest assured that's not how I or my deputy roll," he said. "We act based on the law."
The two Syamsuddins are not believed to be related.