Two of Indonesia’s leading law enforcement officials suddenly stepped down yesterday to soothe a tide of public rage over an escalating corruption scandal that has damaged the nation’s struggle against crippling graft.
Deputy Attorney-General Abdul Hakim Ritonga and General Susno Duadji, the head of national police investigations, resigned after being named in wiretaps this week that exposed a plot to undermine the Corruption Eradication Commission.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters he asked for their resignations, but did not call for their arrests, or condemn their actions. The men were scheduled to be questioned by a special fact-finding team with no power to initiate criminal charges.
“The commitment to eradicate corruption shouldn’t be tainted by other interests,” Yudhoyono said, instructing the government to provide security to witnesses for their safety.
The high-level resignations — virtually unheard of in Javanese culture — were the culmination of a months-long battle between the top anti-graft agency and rival police and prosecutors in Indonesia, which is regularly ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world.
The case has fueled opposition to the police and poses a serious challenge to Yudhoyono’s newly installed government. He was re-elected in July for another five-year term in the Muslim-majority nation of 235 million.
The commission has been key to Indonesia’s efforts to wipe out endemic corruption since the downfall in 1998 of late dictator Suharto. His 32-year rule was marred by human rights violations, cronyism and nepotism that held back economic development and scared away investors.
Public outrage was sparked by the arrest last week of two deputies at the agency, known by its Indonesian acronym KPK. They were released after hundreds of thousands of Internet users signed a petition in support of them on Facebook and protests were held across the main island, Java.
Ritonga and Duadji were named in wiretaps aired on live television this week in which bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars and a plot to frame KPK deputies Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Riyanto were exposed.
Small demonstrations continued after the announcement yesterday, with around a dozen students staging a hunger strike from a tent pitched outside the KPK’s offices in downtown Jakarta. The number of members of the Facebook page for the men neared 850,000.
Although Chandra and Bibit have since been released, they still face charges of abuse of power for issuing a travel ban against a corruption suspect and allegedly hampering investigations by talking to the media.
Yudhoyono, a 60-year-old former general, had been widely credited for the success of the anti-corruption campaign during his first term in office. Scores of corrupt politicians, entrepreneurs and law enforcement officials were tried and convicted, including the father-in-law of one of the president’s sons.
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