If the "crocodile versus gecko" saga two years ago was dubbed the fight-back by corruptors, the latest batch of not guilty verdicts from regional corruption courts is feared to augur the nation's defeat in its war on graft.
The Samarinda Corruption Court in East Kalimantan has acquitted over the past few days 14 members of Kutai Kartanegara legislative council of all charges due to lack of evidence. The exonerations come hard on the heels of other regional corruption courts: in Surabaya, Semarang, Bandung and Jakarta, allowing 27 graft defendants to walk free.
The nation's war on corruption has suffered a further setback with the government failing to take action against, if not actually condoning, "meal money" poured by PT Freeport Indonesia into National Police coffers in exchange for protection for the US gold and copper mining company, despite the security forces being funded from the state budget. Critics say the money will adversely affect the police's impartiality in its dealings with the company.
In the business field corrupt practices are apparently no less rampant, as demonstrated in the latest Transparency International report, which ranks Indonesia fourth globally in terms of the use of bribes in doing business.
Corruption courts, particularly those in the regions, have failed to live up to the public's expectation of seeing honorable judges showing no compromise with this exceptional crime. It is fully understandable that the Judicial Commission plans a comprehensive examination of the relevant judges and their controversial verdicts.
Part of this assessment has revealed that one of the Bandung Corruption Court's ad hoc judges was a former lawyer and businessman who had himself been convicted of graft before being acquitted in an appellate court.
The judges may well have done nothing wrong or maybe they alone cannot be held responsible for the acquittals. Perhaps they could not find the defendants guilty because the prosecutors failed to present convincing evidence. In a bribery case involving junior taxman Gayus Tambunan, state prosecutors deliberately revised the charges to help the defendant escape justice, at a price.
The law enforcers should not dismiss the possibility of violations of codes of conduct or even bribery in the recent exonerations of graft defendants. They must dig deep to find out what went wrong in the cases so as to restore public confidence in the graft warriors.
Corruption and judicial mafia practices remain the enemy that the government of President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono has to beat, or else it will lose the war. Selective remission for graft convicts initiated by the Legal and Human Rights Ministry will not boost the anticorruption campaign, but shift the burden of proof on to graft suspects will.