December 27, 2024
jakarta – About three months ago, when President Prabowo Subianto pledged to fight corruption early in his administration, he appointed Hasto Kristiyanto, secretary-general of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Kristiyanto’s decision to become a corruption suspect is the most significant decision yet.
As a new president who is still trying to consolidate power, Prabowo certainly does not want to alienate the People's Democratic Party, currently the largest party in the House of Representatives.
If anything, Hasto's arrest could complicate his efforts to establish a good and stable relationship with the party's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, despite repeated attempts. This plan has not yet come to fruition.
It is not worth the risk for the president to anger Megawati after just three months in office.
From the perspective of the fight against corruption, the decision to name Hasto as a graft suspect in the bribery case, which involves just over 1 billion rupees ($66,000), should also be lower on the corruption priority list of the Commission for the Eradication of Illegal Cash Transfers (KPK), considering that the anti-corruption body still needs to go after bigger fish in other major corruption cases.
So how are we to understand the KPK's actions against Hasto on Christmas Eve?
In fact, just as the PDI-P removed former President Joko Widodo, his son Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka and son-in-law Bobby Nasuti Days after Bobby Nasution was expelled from the party, Hasto was named as a suspect in a corruption case, which is strong evidence.
For obvious reasons. In the run-up to this year's presidential election, Hasto led a staunch anti-Jokowi faction within the People's Democratic Party, a group of politicians who have been harshly critical of the former president's actions, which they considered anti-democratic. They range from: seeking re-election to nominating his eldest son as the vice presidential candidate.
In May 2023, long before the party nominated its own presidential candidate, the then mayor of Solo, Central Java, met with then-Defence Minister Prabowo Prabowo, with Hasto presiding over a hastily arranged meeting. Condemn Gibran.
In many ways, the decision to name Hastot as a suspect is similar to the arrest of former trade minister Tom Lembong, who was implicated in a corruption case related to sugar imports.
Since the Attorney General's Office (AGO) failed to detail how Tom's decision to import sugar in 2015 cost the country, many believe he was simply being punished for being overly critical of some of Jokowi's economic policies.
It doesn't make much difference now that Hasto's corruption case is being handled by the KPK rather than the AGO, the law enforcement agency under the executive branch of government.
Since 2019, with the changes to the KPK Law, the anti-corruption agency was also placed under the management of the president and its reputation has been in decline ever since (the agency’s previous chairman, Firli Bahuri) Now he has become a corruption suspect and is being investigated by the president.
There is nothing to suggest that the current KPK committee acted differently, their nomination and inauguration was one of Jokowi's final actions in office, and their last move to name Hasto as a suspect in the petty bribery case only confirms Public suspicion.
In its first decade after its founding in the early 2000s, the KPK was a feared institution whose anti-corruption investigations could send shivers down the spines of government officials and politicians.
Today, anti-corruption agencies are little more than tools of political persecution.
