AS colleagues working at the General Elections Commission (KPU), Hamid Awaludin and Daan Dimara used to greet each other like Dutch gentlemen: Meneer Daan and Meneer Hamid, and they often joked with one another. Today, however, they are as distant as the earth and the sky. Hamid is currently the Justice & Human Rights Minister, while Daan Dimara is in a holding cell at the Jakarta Metropolitan Police Headquarters.

In the courtroom of the Central