The recent acquittals of four graft suspects by the Bandung District Court is a setback in the ongoing fight against corruption, an activist said Wednesday.
Chairman of the Bandung Institute of Government Studies, Dedi Haryadi, referred to the acquittals of four former leaders of the Bandung city council Tuesday. Prosecutors had been seeking four-year prison sentences for each of the four defendants being tried for a graft case involving Rp 9.8 billion (approximately US$1.08 million).
Judges at the same court also acquitted former West Java Legislative Council speaker Eka Santosa on charges of misappropriating Rp 33 billion from the 2001-2002 provincial budget.
"I believe the judges are not acting completely independent and are being politically influenced. Many legislators earlier protested about being made scapegoats of the executive body in graft cases," Dedi told The Jakarta Post in Bandung.
Dedi said the acquittals represented the people's inability to fight the "court mafia", which has close ties with legislative and executive bodies, as well as law enforcement agencies.
This so-called court mafia is symbolic of a large wall, he said, discouraging people from exposing graft cases involving public funds managed by legislative and executive bodies.
"We must be more assertive in monitoring judicial institutions, in order to prevent the court mafia from influencing court decisions."
Dedi is skeptical that appeals of the acquittals will be successful. But he did express hope for a thorough reform of the judicial system -- whether through the Attorney General's Office or the Supreme Court.
"This is an uphill task for Pak Hendarman Supandji (the new attorney general) on how he will achieve reform from the top down."
In Ambarawa, Central Java, authorities from the local prosecutor's office on Tuesday took back into custody Semarang Regent Bambang Guritno -- allegedly involved in misappropriating Rp 3.95 billion in the illegal procurement of elementary school textbooks in 2004.
The regent had been receiving treatment at Kariadi Hospital in Semarang over the past week. He is being detained at Benteng Pendhem prison in Ambarawa.
Semarang legislative councilors reported the alleged graft in 2005, after a member from the Prosperous Justice Party, Ahmad Munif, returned Rp 19.5 million to the Ambarawa Prosecutor's Office upon realizing it was the proceeds from a mark-up in the textbook-procurement project.
The prosecutor's office, together with the police, investigated the case and later identified six suspects from the executive and legislative bodies.
At the end of 2005, the six suspects were found guilty and sentenced by the Ungaran District Court to less than two years in prison.
Further investigations led to Bambang Guritno being named a suspect in the case. It is alleged the regent received a payment of Rp 650 million from the textbook publisher's partners.
Source : www.thejakartapost.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment