A family friend came to the rescue to mediate, helping end the 30-hour military police's siege of a general's residence smoothly without a single bullet being fired. The scene was not out of a Hollywood movie, but a real-life incident that ended years of defiance by a once-powerful Army general to comply with a military tribunal's summons for a hearing into the embezzlement of military assets.
Yes, the narrative perfectly depicts the eventual surrender Tuesday of 79-year-old Brig. Gen. (ret) Herman Sarens Sudiro, a former corps commander of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and a close confidante of the late former president Soeharto. Accompanied by former youth and sports minister Adhyaksa Dault, who claimed to be a close friend of Herman's family, the general eventually gave up his resistance and was willing to meet the tribunal's summons for a hearing over his alleged involvement in the embezzlement of TNI assets.
Having built his military career through active service mostly within the capital Jakarta and neighboring West Java province, including a brief stint as commander of the presidential guards in 1967, the flamboyant Herman is known as an avid collector of expensive items, including big motorcycles, rifles and horses. He was active in the management of a number of sports associations, such as shooting, horse riding and boxing, and is currently chairman of the Indonesian Boxing Promoters Association.
The illegal land appropriation case was first brought before a military court in 1992, but Herman has consistently failed to appear, even though the court issued summonses in January, February and March last year.
The allegations against Herman came in the wake of the TNI headquarters' commitment to meet its constitutional obligation of ceding its business activities as part and parcel of its commitment for reforms. Already behind schedule – the deadline for the businesses takeover as stipulated in the 2004 law on the Indonesian Military was October 2009 – the TNI (and the government) is under constant pressure to immediately settle all the obstacles hindering its reform commitment, mainly on relinquishing its businesses.
Herman is alleged to have misappropriated a plot of land belonging to the Army in Warung Buncit in South Jakarta while he was serving in the military in 1967. Yet the land in Warung Buncit – currently idle and used as a parking lot for the neighboring South Jakarta Immigration Office and for visitors and staff of Vice President Boediono, who lives nearby – is apparently not the sole TNI property that the one-star general allegedly misappropriated.
"There have been allegations that [Herman] abused his authority regarding assets belonging to the military, which incurred state losses," TNI spokesman Air Vice Marshall Sagom Tamboen confirmed Tuesday.
Upon learning the motives and the way Herman had allegedly illegally appropriated the TNI's properties as well as poor documentation and control mechanism of state/military assets, it is therefore logical to draw the conclusion that the Warung Buncit case is only the tip of the iceberg. It is believed that there are still many other Hermans – military men with strong connections to the late military ruler Soeharto – who might have illegally appropriated and are in control of state/military assets.
The TNI (and/or the government) is racing against time to settle all the military business-related problems. It has failed to meet the constitutionally mandated five-year deadline. And it will be beyond everyone's expectation if the TNI needs another five years to completely meet its reform commitment.