Irawaty Wardany, Jakarta – Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) has criticized the Attorney General's Office (AGO) for failing to implement internal reforms, on its agenda for two years, and for not emphasizing law enforcement.
When replacing predecessor Abdurrahman Saleh in 2007, Attorney General Hendarman Supandji announced several upcoming reform measures including Attorney General's decrees on recruitment of prosecutors, career management, education and training, the prosecutors' code of ethics, the minimum standards for prosecutors and monitoring, and other improvements.
"The implementation of these reform measured was held up by the prosecutors themselves because most think there is no need for change," Emerson Yuntho, deputy coordinator ICW told a press conference here on Sunday.
Based on ICW's investigations, he said that several promotions of senior prosecutors had violated the provisions of the (career management) decree, which actually made these promotions invalid.
The decree stipulates promotion should be after 25 years of service, but the recent promotion of attorney Budiman Rahardjo as Bali Chief Attorney, a former researcher at the special crime division did not conform to this. Nor did that of Jasman M. Panjaitan as head of information division at the AGO. Nor did this apply to the case of former director of investigation for special crime Muhammad Salim, who was promoted despite a tainted track record when he was implicated in a high-profile bribery case involving prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan.
Urip was convicted and given 20 years imprisonment last year for receiving US$660,000 from a businesswoman Artalyta Suryani, a close relative of tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim.
Urip led an investigation into alleged embezzlement of Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) funds involving Sjamsul, which the AGO dropped due to "lack of evidence".
Emerson said aside from the requirement of having served 25 years minimum at the AGO, the promotions were also conducted by ignoring the integrity of those promoted.
"Promotions seem to have been done hurriedly ignoring regulations, without logical reasons, strengthening public suspicions that these measures [were ignored]," he said.
ICW legal researcher Febri Diansyah said that besides internal policies regarding prosecutors, the AGO also had several controversial policies towards its criminal cases.
"The AGO's policy that allows a corruption suspect not to be detained as long as he or she has returned the state losses he or she embezzled makes the AGO more compromised with corruption, instead of fighting against it," he said.
He added the attorney general said he intended to prioritize prevention rather than enforcement.
"The Attorney General said he would put the emphasis 70 percent on prevention and 30 percent on enforcement. So what's the difference between the AGO and other governmental institutions even though it is [supposed to be] a legal enforcement institution?," Febri said.
Considering all these points, ICW asked the president to prioritize reform and a clean-up within the AGO.
ICW also suggested the president should not let the incumbent attorney general stay on in the position but should carry out a transparent mechanism to chose a new attorney general.