The sad fact is that the next time Schapelle Corby will be stirring the emotions of Australians is a date well into the future, when she walks free from an Indonesian prison into what is likely to be a very small gaggle of well-wishers.
The pretty 27-year-old, with the help of her gold-digger family and some bizarre zig-zags in the conduct of her Supreme Court appeal, has used up the vast outpouring of sympathy and public outrage that greeted the 20-year sentence a Bali court handed her last month, after deciding she did try to bring in 4.1kg of marijuana on a flight from Sydney last October.
At the weekend, Corby dismissed and then re-engaged her legal team. She appointed and then sacked as her chief strategist the Jakarta-based, Australian-born German citizen Walter Tonetto, a 47-year-old with no legal qualifications who describes himself as "an educator, businessman and visioneer."
She also parted with discharged bankrupt and self-appointed Team Corby moneyman Ron Bakir, a Gold Coast cellphone salesman who has been stitching up business deals for her and her family.
"They're all becoming characters in a sort of soap opera, aren't they?" Foreign Minister Alexander Downer quipped. "We're all watching closely and with a great deal of interest, but of course in my position I'm not really prepared to comment publicly on what I think about it all."
Privately, of course, Downer would admit that the ebbing of the tide of sympathy for Corby also means less stress in the crucially important relationship between Jakarta and Canberra.
The day the verdict was declared and a devastated Corby was shown on Australian television responding tearfully to the 20-year sentence, Australian Prime Minister John Howard was fearful that the case could collapse the carefully crafted rapprochement with Indonesia and unravel his personal friendship with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Last month, the Howard government was in overdrive trying to placate Australian public opinion after the Corby case dominated the media.
Now, the tide of public opinion has turned against the lachrymose Corby and her tacky retinue of business advisers and publicity agents. Howard is off the hook and Downer is able to joke about the real and imagined television soap stars that people the Corby case.
There is a real television star: Indonesian pop princess Anisa Hapsari, the lovely face of a public-relations campaign set in train by Corby's bejeweled, on-again off-again Jakarta lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea.
She went on Indonesian television, according to Hutapea, to whip up some domestic sympathy for Corby and so influence the outcome of her Supreme Court appeal.
There was huge media interest in Corby, the photogenic divorcee who, when not holidaying in Bali, worked in the family fish-and-chips shop on the Gold Coast. There was a bidding war for her story.
Enormous sums were on the table for any aspect of the tale.
Amazingly, none of the lawyers she engaged seemed to be interested in getting paid. Hutapea promised to pay all his costs himself. Two eminent Australian barristers said they would be working for free.
Bakir, Corby's self-styled "white knight," pledged that he would not earn a single cent from the deals he arranged. Tonetto never mentioned money.
Corby's family was less circumspect. Moments after the verdict was handed down, Corby's sister left her side to do a paid interview. Her mother took an all-expenses-paid trip to Bali to attend court.
Bakir said the Corby family earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorships and media bookings from Schapelle's misfortune.
The smell of money further dissipated sympathy for Corby. An Australian barrister working for free, Mark Trowell, publicly accused one of Corby's legal team, Vasu Rasiah, of seeking half a million dollars of Australian government money to bribe judges hearing the appeal.
"Vasu said this: `Forget the merits of the appeal, all you have to do is put in the appeal and if you have got money to bribe the judges, you will win the appeal,'" Trowell said.
Vasu said that the A$500,000 (US$385,000) was not for bribes but to finance a public-relations campaign in which Indonesian journalists would be paid to write articles about Corby's plight.
Downer said the claims and counter-claims, the team reshuffles and the changing strategies, had sapped public confidence and undermined the Supreme Court appeal.
"It's hard to believe that it's helpful," Downer said. "On the other hand, I suspect the appeals court judges will make a decision on the merits of the case put before them rather than on these kinds of issues."
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number