An anti-government protester holds a placard on Feb 12, 2024, that reads, 'Jokowi, Gibran, Kaesang are models of nepotism' to denounce outgoing President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo during a rally demanding a fair election outside the Senayan legislative complex in Jakarta. - Reuters
JAKARTA: The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has ramped up pressure on Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, with the party using an award for “the most corrupt” figure as a call for the country’s law enforcement institutions to investigate the former president for corruption.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international nonprofit organization of investigative journalists, announced on Monday that the country’s seventh president was a finalist nominated for the 2024 Most Corrupt Person of the Year.
The annual award serves to promote accountability and single out people who “do the most to wreak havoc around the world through organiSed crime and corruption”, OCCRP wrote on its website.
Journalists, academics and members of the public cast their votes every year, with a group of judges selecting the winner and finalists.
The 2024 winner was former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown in early December by rebel forces, ending his and his family’s authoritarian rule that lasted half a century.
Other finalists include Kenyan President William Ruto and former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Responding to the award, Jokowi questioned what he corrupted and demanded the evidence to support such allegations, Kompas TV reported on Tuesday.
He further implied that the award could be politically driven, as people could “use any vehicle to create such a horrible framing, whether through NGOs, political parties or mass organizations”.
Jokowi’s former party, the PDI-P, responded to the former president’s inclusion in the award by calling for Indonesian authorities to use it as a starting point to investigate him for corruption.
“The report can be a reference for the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] and other institutions such as the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office [AGO] look into Jokowi and his family,” PDI-P spokesperson Guntur Romli said on Tuesday, as quoted by tribunnews.com.
But Dave Laksono, politician of Golkar Party, which is part of the ruling Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM), warned that any domestic and international groups to “not carelessly spread accusations without any evidence”.
During February’s presidential election, KIM members supported President Prabowo Subianto and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka.
The pair received Jokowi’s tacit support ahead of the poll. “If they don’t [have any proof], it can be considered slander which is subject to legal prosecution,” Dave told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
KPK spokesperson Tessa Mahadhika Sugiarto said that anyone who has evidence of corruption should report to the antigraft body or other institutions, asserting that “all Indonesians are equal under the eyes of the law” regardless of their position or rank.
The PDI-P’s statement was seen as a jab at Jokowi after tensions between them intensified in recent weeks, according to political analyst Yoes Kenawas.
In late December, the KPK named PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto a graft suspect in a bribery case; a move that many saw as an extension of Jokowi and the PDI-P’s conflict into the legal sphere.
Jokowi relied on the PDI-P as his political vehicle for most of his political career. But his relationship with the party and its chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri soured after he threw his weight behind Prabowo, the rival of the PDI-P’s candidate Ganjar Pranowo, in the presidential race.
The party officially fired Jokowi in December, along with Gibran and his son-in-law, North Sumatra governor elect Bobby Nasution. But Yoes said that the PDI-P’s call for the KPK and other law enforcement institutions to look into Jokowi was a political maneuver to put pressure on the former president.
“The OCCRP itself defines corruption not merely as [enriching oneself], but also includes corrupt practices such as vote-rigging,” he said.
“So, the call for the KPK to investigate him was misplaced if the PDI-P wants to genuinely get Jokowi [arrested].”
While Yoes said that the political skirmishes between Jokowi and the PDI-P would continue in the future, politicians in Jakarta saw signs of reconciliation after a turbulent political year in 2024.
On Tuesday, the Jakarta administration hosted a New Year’s Eve event for former governors. The city administration will be led by PDI-P cadre pair Pramono Anung and Rano Karno, who won the gubernatorial election in November.
Among the attendants were former governors Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and Anies Baswedan. Both politicians faced each other in the 2017 gubernatorial election, which was won by Anies after observers said that he rode on a wave of growing religious conservatism.
Ahok is a Christian of Chinese descent. But Anies and Ahok shared a warm exchange at Tuesday’s event, after which the latter said that they were “working to prepare some surprises [...] sometime next month”.
Jokowi was invited to the event but did not come, citing on Thursday that he had to attend another event in his hometown of Surakarta in Central Java. Anies once served as Jokowi’s education minister during the president’s first term. But Jokowi removed the minister in 2016.
Since then, Anies was widely seen as Jokowi’s “antithesis”, with his Jakarta governorship between 2017 and 2022 marred by political attacks from pro-government parties.
Responding to allegations that he avoided Anies by not attending Tuesday’s event in Jakarta, Jokowi said, “I still have a good relationship with Ahok and Anies,” as quoted by kompas.com. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
