December 30, 2024
JAKARTA – President Prabowo Subianto and Law Minister Supratman Andi Agtas have walked back comments they made several weeks ago suggesting that the government might pardon graft convicts.
In his Christmas remarks on Saturday, Prabowo denied that he wanted to pardon graft convicts, saying he simply wanted them to “repent” and return the money they stole as part of their atonement.
“Some have said that Prabowo wants to pardon graft criminals, but that’s not the case. What if the convicts have already repented?” he said in front of religious figures and an audience of thousands at the national Christmas celebration at the Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Sports Complex in Jakarta.
“I want to make them aware [of their wrongdoing]. Those who have sinned, just repent. That is what religion teaches us,” the President added. “It’s not that I will pardon them.”
At an event in Cairo on Dec. 18 before an audience of Indonesian university students, Prabowo had said that he might pardon people convicted of graft if they returned what they stole. At the time, he gave no further details on the idea.
His comments prompted criticism from the public and anticorruption watchdogs, with the latter saying the plan went against the Corruption Law, which states that returning the state’s financial losses does not absolve wrongdoers of their crimes.
But Law Minister Supratman later expressed support for the President’s idea, saying improving asset recovery in graft cases was more important than simply punishing the convicts.
“The fact, so far, is that after someone is sentenced, they pay the compensation but it does not reach the amount of the state losses [caused by the graft],” Supratman said at his office in Jakarta on Dec. 23, as quoted by Antara.
Supratman suggested a settlement called the “peace fine” as one of the ways the government could implement Prabowo’s idea. The fine is a mechanism under the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) where a case can be settled out of court by paying a fine approved by the AGO.
However, AGO spokesperson Harli Siregar said on Friday that the so-called peace fine was, according to the AGO Law, strictly for the resolution of financial crimes, such as customs and excise cases, and not corruption cases, Antara reported.
Following the public backlash, Supratman has since apologized for suggesting the settlement plan could be used for corruption cases.
“I just wanted to compare [possible plans for graft convicts]. It doesn’t mean that the President will use that, absolutely not,” the minister said in a press briefing on Friday, kompas.com reported.
Unclear plan
Despite Prabowo’s explanation and Supratman’s apology, antigraft activists say the government’s next steps for graft convicts are unclear.
“There is still no explanation whatsoever about the mechanism that the government might use to pardon graft convicts,” Zaenur Rohman of the Gadjah Mada University’s Center for Anticorruption Studies (Pukat UGM) told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Zaenur questioned whether Supratman’s apology meant that the government would now drop the idea of pardoning graft convicts or simply not use the AGO’s settlement plan to do so.
He also suggested that Prabowo and his government “forget the idea and move on” as there were other pressing issues to deal with.
“We hope the government can just focus on immediately revising the Corruption Law to outlaw illicit enrichment and pass the asset recovery bill,” Zaenur added, saying it could help recover stolen assets more effectively than pardoning graft convicts.
The asset forfeiture bill has barely progressed since it was dropped from the House of Representatives’ priority legislation list in 2012.
Since taking office in October, Prabowo has vowed to eradicate corruption through “realistic” approaches, such as by increasing state officials’ wages.
The President said in his Christmas remarks that fighting corruption remained “a collective challenge” and asked the people to trust the government’s process.
“We have only been in office for two months and eight days as of today, […] so I beg you to be patient and allow us to work seriously,” he said.
Indonesia lost ground in its fight against corruption during the 10-year administration of Prabowo’s predecessor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, experts say.