Tommy’s Targets?
WHEN bomb after bomb goes off and victims fall like flies, we suddenly find ourselves missing Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s private detective always got his man. Through his meticulousness in studying the scenes of cunning crimes, he uncovered damning evidence in places lesser mortals had dismissed as insignificant. Indonesia could really do with some of his skills right now. Its own security forces have failed dismally to solve a lengthy series of bombing cases, one after another.
Unfortunately, Holmes belongs only to the world of fiction, while the numerous explosions really have happened and the dozens of victims who lost their lives or suffered serious injuries in them really exist as well. The best we can do is try to imagine what this mythical crime-buster’s line of thinking might be, as we struggle to catch the masterminds behind this terror campaign.
"Elementary, my dear Watson." Those were usual words of advice the great Holmes gave to his slow sidekick, Dr Watson. Surely we can imagine his pal asking Holmes the following: Does the fact that several of these incidents happened at moments when Tommy Suharto or his father were under intense pressure from the legal system suggest we are missing something ‘elementary’? Or are there groups who want the masses to draw this kind of conclusion for their own aims? And if so, what are those aims?
Again, of course, Holmes is only fiction. And very unfortunately again, President Abdurrahman Wahid is clearly no Holmes. So when Gus Dur accused Suharto’s youngest son of being the mastermind behind the bombings and told the police to take him in, Indonesia was rather unconvinced. This story does not sound like one in its final chapters, with a happy ending waiting a little further down the line. Is it possible for a story to end happily when the flowers over the victims’ graves are not yet dry?
Suharto and his family may be completely unconnected with bloody bombings that have occurred in various corners of the nation. Be that as it may, there are plenty of other ways to get them into jail, just in case, if only the government wanted to use them. Don’t they all still have massive debts to the state? And has not the Supreme Court ruled that those whose debts to the government are above Rp1 billion can be jailed?
The answers are: yes and yes.
The government has a chance to assuage at least some of its people’s doubts about their chances of getting justice, simply by using the appropriate legal apparatus. A nasty piece of work like Al Capone, despite his reputation as a cold-blooded killer and rapist, ended his days in jail over something that appeared unimportant and trivial. He forgot to pay his taxes.
Elliott Ness was the commander of a police unit that proved it could neither be bought nor cowed by terror. Nicknamed ‘The Untouchables’, they were convinced that jail would quickly dampen the charisma of crime bosses like Capone. They proved their point. The longer the Chicago mafia boss remained behind bars, the more people dared to come forward as witnesses about his nasty deeds. As time went on, the door through which Capone might have regained his former power as the crime king of Chicago became welded ever more tightly shut.
Fortunately for us, Elliott Ness was not a fictional character, however much the Hollywood screen has subsequently made us see him in that light. Capone was real too. His legendary cruelty is no fairy tale to scare children at bedtime. It all really happened. How stupid are those who turn their backs on the past when they could draw a useful lesson or two from it.
Of course, Jakarta is not the Chicago of the 1930s and Tommy Suharto is no Al Capone. But let us examine what has really happened this year. On March 13, a bullet shattered a window of the meeting room of Commission V of the House of Representatives. On the same day Suharto’s youngest son came to give evidence about his involvement in the Clove Marketing and Buffer Stock Agency (BPPC) when his father was in power.
Three months later, on July 4, a bomb went off at the Attorney General’s Office. It occurred an hour after Tommy Suharto was questioned. Two unexploded bombs, both of standard type used by the Indonesian Military, were later also found. On August 1, a powerful bomb went off in front of the house of the Philippine ambassador, three days after the State Prosecutor’s office sent the Suharto dossiers to court. On August 28, a grenade went off at the Malaysian Embassy, three days before the first hearing of Suharto’s trial. A day before it began, a minivan blew up in front of the Ministry of Agriculture, the trial location. A day before the trial resumed last week, a bomb exploded at the Jakarta Stock Exchange. It killed 15 innocent people.
It is hard for a sane mind to accept that a pattern like this occurs just by chance. There are really just two possibilities. Either there is a connection between these incidents and the Cendana family, as Suharto’s is known, or they were deliberately arranged by others who want the public to draw that conclusion.
It is not easy to make an objective assessment. It would be far easier to simply put the Cendana family and their cronies in jail over their debts. Once they were in there, there might be time to observe whether the spate of bombings carries on.
"Elementary my dear Watson." Indonesia needs to learn from Sherlock Holmes that to solve a case, you don’t always look only for direct evidence. And also from Elliott Ness, who believed there are many ways to jail lawbreakers.
CM