Irawaty Wardany, Jakarta – The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) won praises from many circles last year for its role in sending several high profile figures to jail.
The anticorruption agency helped indite senior prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan and Bank Indonesia senior officials, among them former governor Burhanuddin Abdullah.
The achievements put to sleep lingering public doubts about the credibility and integrity of new KPK chairman Antasari Azhar, a former Attorney General's Offi ce (AGO) spokesman.
However, 2009 has not seen a continuation of the commission's previous success. The KPK failed this month to have former legislators Hamka Yandhu, Anthony Zeidra Abidin and Al Amin Nur Nasution jailed for alleged bribery. However, the Corruption Court found the defendants guilty of their second indictment – receiving gratuity, which carries a lighter sentence.
"The KPK and the AGO tend to only reveal cases but are not able to follow through on them," Zainal Arifi n Mochtar, director of the Center for Anticorruption Studies at Gadjah Mada University, told The Jakarta Post. He said the two law-enforcing bodies generally failed to find incriminating evidence, citing the Hamka-Anthony cases as an example.
Hamka and Anthony were among 50 legislators on Commission IX overseeing financial and banking issues at the House of Representatives who allegedly received a total of Rp 31.5 billion (US$28 million) from Bank Indonesia (BI) in 2003 as payment for smoothing the political settlement of a loan scandal involving BI and an amendment to the BI law.
However, most of the 50, including current State Minister for National Development Planning Paskah Suzetta and Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban, remain free.
Only Hamka and Anthony have been sentenced in the BI scandal. They were handed down 3- and 4-and-a-half-year prison sentences, respectively.
Al Amin was also convicted of receiving gratuity in two protected forest conversion projects – one in Banyuasin, South Sumatra, and another in Bintan, Riau Islands – and of blackmail in a procurement project at the Forestry Ministry. He was jailed for eight years for the charges.
In the two cases, Zainal said, KPK prosecutors had failed to prove that BI was willing to transcend the law by paying out bribes to House members.
"I don't know if this is a sign of things to come for the KPK, but it will probably have an effect," he said. Zainal called on the public to encourage the KPK to focus on developing a killer instinct to follow through on a case once they had uncovered it.
University of Indonesia's Court Monitoring head Hasril Hertanto said the KPK had to follow the money to the culprits. He cited as example the implication of several national figures, including minister Paskah and Supreme Audit Agency head Anwar Nasution, in the same BI graft case.
Anwar was among the BI board of directors who also signed the 2003 approval to disburse the money for the Commission IX legislators. "Why haven't they become KPK's targets? It seems like the case will end with Hamka and Anthony," he said.
Hasril said part of the problem was that there were no justices dedicated to fighting graft. "It is understandable because [Corruption Court justices] have no real expertise in those cases as they have to handle so many kinds of cases.
Besides that, both career justices and ad-hoc justices still have to do their day-to-day jobs outside of the Corruption Court," he said.