Heru Andriyanto – If all goes according to plan, prosecutors suspected of corruption will not simply face disciplinary sanctions but could end up on the wrong side of the courtroom as defendants.
In an unprecedented move, the Attorney General's Office said that prosecutors could now face criminal charges because internal sanctions had failed to combat graft in their ranks.
Marwan Effendy, deputy attorney general for internal supervision, said on Wednesday that the number of prosecutors receiving disciplinary sanctions had increased sharply in 2010 from the year before. The AGO believes the phenomenon has been triggered by the soft nature of the punishments and their failure to act as deterrents.
The "light" sanctions, such as written reprimands and delayed promotions, were not effective, Marwan said, but hopefully dishonorable dismissals and criminal trials would deter prosecutors from committing offenses.
"In the future, we shall handle graft cases involving prosecutors ourselves," Marwan said.
He explained that last year, for example, 288 prosecutors had received sanctions over suspicions of having committed a host of crimes, including possession and use of narcotics, extortion and fraud.
"This is in comparison to 192 prosecutors disciplined in 2009. That is a sharp increase," he said. He added that at least 32 prosecutors and administrative staff members had recently been fired for various offenses.
"We shall shift our approach to one that shall carry heavier sanctions," Marwan said. "If we find criminal evidence, we will work for the case to be brought to court. The case shall either be handed to the police or to the round building [the office of the AGO's special crimes unit that handles corruption cases]."
"This is what I mean, we cannot take this matter lightly because we need to change the mind-set and behavior [of prosecutors] and because people are increasingly losing confidence in law enforcement," he added.
Marwan said the new get-tough strategy was already creating unease among AGO personnel, with an unnamed individual writing to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to complain that Marwan was "adopting an approach normally taken by thugs."
The AGO has been embarrassed by a number of recent scandals involving prosecutors.
In Bojonegoro, East Java, district prosecutors were accused of lax oversight after it was revealed in January that a female convict had paid another woman Rp 10 million ($1,110) to serve a seven-month prison sentence in her place. The city's chief prosecutor, Wahyudi, was transferred to a desk job in Jakarta.
Last month, an official with the Tangerang Prosecutor's Office was apprehended by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for allegedly taking a Rp 50 million bribe from a bank employee in exchange for dropping a fraud case against the banker's colleague.
The AGO initially maintained that the arrest by the rival agency was a clear case of entrapment, but later backed down, saying the official would have to face the consequences of his actions.