Arientha Primanita & Febriamy Hutapea – Just as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono broke his silence on the Muhammad Nazaruddin case on Friday and urged the rogue former Democratic treasurer to "come home," his plea was drowned out by a barrage of excuses and accusations by the fugitive himself in another television interview.
As if to taunt his former boss, Nazaruddin appeared in a recorded Skype conversation to further detail his accusations against his party.
Wearing a straw hat and speaking from what appeared to a bare bungalow room, he detailed the many accusations he had made against a host of democrats, including chairman Anas Urbaningrum.
But he also startlingly claimed he had recently escaped an assassination attempt by two men. "There are two men after me and I have been shot at... The shot almost hit my head, but thank God I escaped. There are also [people] guarding me," he said in the interview with freelance journalist Iwan Piliang broadcast on Metro TV on Friday evening.
Nazaruddin, who went underground after leaving for Singapore on May 23, insisted he really was overseas and played a phone ringtone that many had heard in the background of an interview aired on television earlier this week. Rumors had swirled after the Tuesday broadcast that the sound had been a jingle from an Indonesian bakery vendor, meaning Nazaruddin might in fact be in the country.
He wanted the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to probe two graft cases linked to sports projects from which he said Anas and many other Democrats had received money. "I really am abroad. I will return if the KPK opens up the case of the athletes' village and the Hambalang stadium," he said.
He provided more details of his accusation that Anas's bid for the chairmanship of the Democratic Party had been funded by money from the state budget.
"The public knows Anas did not have the backing of SBY," he said of the situation in the run-up to the election of the party chair.
"All the money was collected from the state budget fund," he said, detailing that the money came from contributions linked to the distribution of several construction projects, including the athletes' village in Palembang and the Hambalang sport stadium in Bogor.
He also repeatedly waved a flash drive that he claimed contained a detailed list of who received money, how much and from whom during the party congress when the election took place. "Anas won because of money, and this cannot be denied," he said.
Anas was no longer the same person he had known and helped since 2004. "I feel hurt, he has destroyed my family. I have enjoyed not a single rupiah from state budget money, or what's more, allocated to the athletes' village. Not a single rupiah," he said.
Yudhoyono had earlier in the day sought to salvage his party's image ahead of a national coordination meeting in Sentul City this weekend by calling on Nazaruddin to "come home to the country and as a good citizen please follow legal process with the KPK and the police."
Yudhoyono, the Democratic Party's patron, said Nazaruddin's many statements in the media implicating various Democrats and anti-corruption officials in graft scandals had left party members confused and suspicious of one another.
Anas has denied the allegations and said the attacks were part of a larger game by political players seeking to discredit him. He had said "certain groups are using Nazaruddin to commit a character assassination" against him, but did not elaborate.