Indonesia: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono fails to uphold law supremacy: Discussion

“The police and the attorney general have both failed to regain the public trust. We can say that SBY [Yudhoyono] has failed.”

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The Jakarta Post | Headlines
By Hans David Tampubolon | October 22, 2010

Law enforcement, the fight against corruption and economic enhancement are the weak points of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration in the first year of his second term, a discussion heard.

“In terms of law enforcement, we have been witnessing many issues over the last one year with cases such as the Bibit-Chandra case, the Bank Century debacle, alleged fat bank accounts of police officers, molotov bombing attack on Tempo magazine office and bullying on anti-corruption activist Tama S. Langkun,” Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) senior researcher Burhanuddin Muhtadi told the discussion at the House of Representatives on Friday.


Burhanuddin added that oppression against minority groups was a major homework the President had to resolve.

“There is a regent’s instruction to exile Ahmadiyah sect followers on an island. The state must do something about that,” Burhanuddin said.

He said persecution against the Ahmadis reminded him of the practice in medieval Europe, which should have been absent in a modern democracy like Indonesia.

Burhanuddin added the government’s poor showing in the fight against corruption was ironic because the main selling point of Yudhoyono during the last presidential campaign was his commitment to supremacy of law.

Another speaker at the discussion, law expert Irmanputra Sidin, said the President was to blame if the law enforcement agencies failed to reform themselves.

“The police and the attorney general have both failed to regain the public trust. We can say that SBY [Yudhoyono] has failed,” he said.

Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum defended the government, saying there had been major improvements in law enforcement, however, most of them went unheard due to poor public relations.




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