Jakarta – There has been a flurry of remonstrations, but tellingly no outright denials, over reports that the controversial police general spearheading the campaign to undermine the antigraft commission has been removed from his post.
The news first surfaced early on Wednesday, when anonymous officials from the State Palace told reporters that President Joko Widodo had summoned Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, the National Police's chief of detectives, to a late-night meeting at the palace on Tuesday to admonish him for reportedly overreaching his authority in a wide range of cases.
While the sources were agreed on the point that Waseso had been ordered out of office and into a desk job, they diverged on the issue of who would replace him. One official said the recently appointed chief of the Jakarta Police, Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, would be named the new chief of detectives – the most powerful seat in the National Police outside the police chief – while another said the post would go to Insp. Gen. Saud Usman Nasution, the head of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).
Waseso, when asked about the reports, neither confirmed nor denied that he had been fired. Instead, he took issue with the widely speculated reason given: that his aggressive bid to outdo the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in going after graft allegations was exacerbating an already fraught economic climate.
"You have to prove that I slowed down the economy. The point is I didn't because I'm protecting state assets from the people who are trying to undermine national interests," he said.
Waseso, stalked by controversy since he came to office in January, managed to rile senior government officials with a far-reaching probe into alleged corruption behind the clearance of container traffic through Jakarta's Tanjung Priok Port.
Richard J. Lino, the head of state-owned port operator Pelindo II, threatened to resign last week because of the disruption wreaked on his office's operations as a result of a series of raids by Waseso's men, which he argued were unwarranted and excessive.
Waseso also broke protocol last week when he claimed that one of the 19 candidates short-listed for a seat on the KPK was a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation. He promised to name the individual on Monday, but was headed off by the police chief, Gen. Badrodin Haiti, who said it was against procedure to do so. Observers saw Waseso's claim as a barely concealed attempt to influence the selection of the final eight candidates by the KPK selection committee.
And though he was pre-empted from naming the alleged suspect, his men still went on to raid the offices of the Pertamina Foundation in a purported antigraft investigation. The foundation was until recently headed by Nina Nurlina Pramono, one of the 19 KPK candidates. She did not make the final eight, announced on Tuesday.
Other officials the Jakarta Globe reached out to for confirmation of Waseso's reported firing also stopped short of denying the speculation. "I can't comment on that because I haven't received official notification," Luhut B. Panjaitan, the chief security minister, said at the State Palace on Wednesday.
State Secretary Pratikno, whose office would have handled the paperwork for the appointment of a new chief of detectives, said he wasn't aware of the matter. "But I do know that that decision would be up to the police chief to make," he added.
Top-ranking police officials also said they knew nothing of the reported development, but did not refute the claim. The Globe was unable to reach Badrodin for comment as of press time.
In addition to the Pelindo II and Pertamina Foundation probes, Waseso has come under fire for his rabid investigation of alleged cattle stockpiling by feedlotters, whom he blames for a recent surge in the price of beef.
The real reason for the price spike was the Trade Ministry's ill-advised move to slash the quarterly cattle import quota by more than 80 percent. Joko subsequently replaced the trade minister in a reshuffle last month, with the new minister promptly increasing the import quota in one of his first tasks in office.
Outside of these cases, Waseso is most notorious for pursuing criminal charges widely seen as fabricated against KPK officials. The detectives' unit has charged two KPK commissioners – chairman Abraham Samad and deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto – and senior investigator Novel Baswedan in a series of dubious cases going back up to a decade.
The charges only emerged in the wake of the KPK charging Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, a candidate for police chief, with bribery and money-laundering, in connection with undeclared millions of dollars in transactions through his personal bank accounts. Budi was later dropped from the running for police chief, but was later appointed deputy chief.
Waseso has publicly proclaimed himself an acolyte of Budi Gunawan's. Public opposition to the controversial general has mounted in the months since he took office, with an online petition launched in July demanding that he be fired. The petition has drawn more than 19,000 signatures to date.