Farouk Arnaz, Jakarta – The controversial police general overseeing dubious criminal investigations against antigraft officials promised on Friday that his office would not "criminalize" their replacements.

Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, the National Police's chief of detectives, told reporters in Jakarta that police would thoroughly vet the 48 short-listed candidates running for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to ensure there were no outstanding or pending criminal complaints or investigations against them.

"We're already working on it and I don't think it's going to be difficult to verify [their track records], even if not all police stations nationwide are [connected to an online database], because these 48 candidates are well known," Budi said.

"We want to make sure they're clean and clear," he added. "We won't undermine [the new KPK commissioners], and if a complaint does indeed emerge against one of them, we'll hold off on investigating it until they have finished their term in office."

A presidentially appointed selection committee is currently vetting candidates to fill five posts of KPK commissioner. Two of the incumbent commissioners, chairman Abraham Samad and deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto, have been suspended after the police brought charges widely seen as trumped up against them earlier this year.

A third official, senior KPK investigator Novel Baswedan, also faces a police investigation on charges that the police previously attempted, and failed, to bring against him.

The slew of charges, some from cases dating back up to a decade, are widely seen as retaliation by the police against the KPK after the antigraft body in January charged Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, a candidate for National Police chief, with bribery and money laundering, in connection with undeclared millions of dollars in his personal bank accounts.

Waseso, a self-professed sycophant to Budi Gunawan, who managed to get the charges against him thrown out in a bizarre ruling universally panned by legal scholars but was dropped from the running for police chief, said the reason his office was investigating the current batch of KPK commissioners was because the police had not vetted them when they were selected, and thus were not alerted earlier to the outstanding complaints against Abraham and Bambang.

Asked if the police would try to fabricate charges against the new commissioners if they named another senior police officer a suspect, Waseso said "That's different. Don't get it twisted."

The chief of detectives is the subject of mounting criticism for his office's blatant bid to undermine the KPK. A petition calling for him to be fired has garnered more than 19,000 signatures since it went online on July 16.

The initiators of the petition noted that in the same time that Waseso's office had pursued charges against 49 KPK members and others sympathetic to the antigraft cause, the detectives' unit had only begun investigating four actual corruption cases, naming only 10 people as suspects – none of whom has yet been indicted.

Waseso has also drawn the ire of Ahmad "Buya" Syafii Maarif, the highly regarded former chairman of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-biggest Islamic organization, who accused him of not understanding the law.

Buya has been one of Waseso's most vocal critics since the latter began going after the KPK officials in January, accusing the police general of not understanding detective work and of not having "the least bit of competence or professionalism."

"That's the sign of an official [Waseso] who lacks confidence. He's mentally unstable if he can so easily name people as suspects," Buya told an audience that included President Joko and the current KPK leadership on July 13. "I hope the nation no longer has to be led by someone as erratic as this."

In March, Buya told Vice President Jusuf Kalla that the "chief of detectives doesn't understand detective work. He doesn't have the least bit of competence or professionalism."

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/police-wont-criminalize-new-KPK-leaders-budi-waseso-says/