Positive Signs from a Shameful Scandal

Last week, calls for Setya Novanto, speaker of Indonesia's legislature and a senior member of Golkar, the second-largest party in the country, to resign from his post, gained considerablemomentum. Social media has been swamped with criticism of the recent legislative ethics committee hearing, reviewing allegations of extortion by the speaker in a meeting with Maroef Sjamsoeddin, CEO of Freeport Indonesia, a subsidiary of US-based mining company Freeport McMoran. In the meeting, the speaker allegedly asked for a 20-percent stake in Freeport Indonesia to be given to President Joko Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla in return for facilitating an extension of the company's lucrative gold and copper mining concession in Papua, which expires in 2021.

The social backlash targeted at the House ethics committee hearing, which tended to focus more on questioning the motive and legality of Maroef's taping the discussion and that of Sudirman Said, the energy and mineral resources minister, reporting the incident, instead of assessing whether the speaker had breached ethical norms and acted inappropriately. With the ethics committee comprising of fellow lawmakers, it was no surprise that they tended to sidestep discussing the speaker's misconduct in a more in-depth way.