18 December 2015•Update: 18 December 2015
By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
An Indonesian commission selected Thursday five new officials to the anti-graft agency, which has been at the center of a conflict with the country’s national police.
Aziz Shamsuddin, chairman of Commission III tasked with the selection process, announced in the parliament complex, “the chairmen of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) have been set.”
MetroTV reported him as saying, “we have chosen these five names to occupy the post for four years."
Before they can assume their posts, the five must be presented to President Joko Widodo and win his approval.
The new officials include bureaucrat Agus Rahardjo, Judge Alexander Marwata, lecturer Laode Muhammad Sharif, intelligence expert Saut Situmorang and police official Basaria Panjaitan -- who has become the first woman to occupy a high-ranking KPK post.
They were among those chosen by a team – formed by Widodo and consisting of nine women from various professional backgrounds – tasked with screening hundreds of applicants for the top posts in the agency.
The team chose ten people to present to Commission III to be grilled in a “fit and proper” test before five were selected to lead the agency -- an institution feared among state officials due to its success in prosecuting suspects, among whom have been ministers and law enforcement figures.
Over the last year, the agency has been ensnared in an intensified feud with the national police after the KPK named Widodo’s first choice for national police chief, Budi Gunawan, as a suspect in a corruption investigation in January.
The police then launched probes into KPK chairman Abraham Samad and his deputy Bambang Widjojanto on respective forgery and false testimony charges, prompting their dismissal in February.
The selection Thursday, however, has drawn criticism from activists of the Indonesia Corruption Watch.
Emerson Yuntho, chairman of the organization’s Legal and Judicial Monitoring Division, accused Commission III of deliberately choosing five candidates who were deemed less likely to be aggressive in eradicating corruption.
"The future of combating corruption will be increasingly bleak," Detik.com quoted him as saying.
He underlined how some of the five had placed more emphasis on corruption prevention measures rather than efforts to combat graft during the interview process.
“KPK will be a commission to prevent corruption, or even a center to collect information about corruption,” Yuntho said.
