A Year of Ironies and Corruption
INDONESIAN law presented a very ugly face in 2009. The year saw Prita Mulyasari, a lowly housewife, indicted for complaining in an email of a hospital’s poor service; Mbok Minah, a poor farmer, for “stealing” three pods of cacao, and many more others who were sent to jail too poor to bribe corrupt officials. All this while the moneyed people trampled on the law and made a mockery of it with impunity. A running feud between the police and an anticorruption body demonstrated the extent of control exercised by moneyed people in the legal process in this country.
December 22, 2009
Crocodile vs House Lizard
THE legal tragedy was revealed at a meeting of the Constitutional Court early in November. The court, then in the course of putting an anticorruption law to a material test, ordered a replay of a wiretap recording of a conversation between Anggodo Widjojo, a shady businessman, and officials of the police and the public prosecutor’s office.
Anggodo was believed to have played a key role in a recent decision by the po
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