The President’s Fate after Suwondo’s Capture
Casting aspersions has been a fondness of Abdurrahman Wahid's for quite some time, long before he became president of Indonesia. Shortly after he was elected head of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Muslim organization, for instance, he compared the diversity of those who were NU members to a group of mosque-goers. "The majority of them actually intend to perform deeds of worship, but there are also those who go to steal sandals."
That observation, which is difficult to refute, may also be appropriate to describe the diversity of his followers at the presidential palace. This is especially true after the disclosure of Buloggate, in which Suwondo, the presidential masseur, apparently succeeded in convincing an ambitious deputy head of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) to outlay funds for the Yanatera Foundation in the amount of Rp 35 billion.
Alip Agung Suwondo, who has been a fugitive for the past five months, is now in a police holding cell. Does this mean that the case has been solved and can immediately be closed? Not quite yet. As a result of following the money trail from the bank accounts of this foundation – which is held by employees of Bulog – there are indications that Suwondo was not 'stealing sandals' just for himself. Most of the money was distributed to individuals who are known to be close to President Abdurrahman. Some of them immediately returned the money to the police, saying they did not know it originated from illegal activities. However, there were also those who held on to it, reasoning that the funds were received as the result of a legal transaction. Whatever the reason, their involvement in the money trail indicates that Suwondo was not acting as a lone ranger, but was, in fact, part of a conspiracy.
And then there is Sapuan, the former deputy head of Bulog, who is also confined to a holding cell, and has accused President Abdurrahman of being involved. In his explanation to the police, he related that the head of state requested him to outlay half of Bulog's tactical funds to finance an Aceh reconciliation project. In addition, the former head of Bulog, Jusuf Kalla, maintained that he never received a request via telephone from Minister of Foreign Affairs Alwi Shihab regarding the total amount of funds that had been released to the Yanatera Foundation. All of this indicates that there was indeed a secret operation to transfer Bulog’s tactical funds to the vaults of the palace.
This activity immediately reminds us of the Iran-Contra Affair, which took place in America when Ronald Reagan was in office. A dispute between the White House and Congress in connection with their foreign policy on Nicaragua led Reagan’s assistants to look for a way to assist the anticommunist Contra guerillas, without using state funds. Understand that the representatives had already passed a law that forbade assistance to this group due to their reputation of often disregarding human rights in their operations. The name of Colonel Oliver North came to the surface, a marine officer who was assigned to the National Security Council at the White House.
North secretly colluded with the Israeli secret service to sell American guided missiles to Iran at an inflated price. The profit from this transaction was then used to fund the Contras. When the story of North’s undertakings leaked, it gave an opportunity to the opposing Democratic Party to try to topple Reagan.
This attempt was given to failure because North stated that all of his operations were undertaken solely on his initiative. However, what is more noteworthy is that as a result of Reagan ordering an open legal investigation to be conducted, North and several of his superiors were consequently discharged. Reagan had evidently taken a lesson from the bitter experience of president Richard Nixon, whose situation worsened because he tried to cover up the acts of his men involved in Watergate.
It proved to be an effective policy. Many groups of the American public considered North a hero and the U.S. Congress a group of political opportunists in the Iran-Contra Affair. As proof, not long after the story came out, Oliver North was almost elected a senator in Virginia. Even the Republican Party, which supported Reagan, did not suffer much as a result of this case, as their candidate, George Bush, was later chosen as Reagan’s successor.
President Abdurrahman, it seems, wishes to follow in Reagan’s footsteps. However, Suwondo is not a marine officer with a brilliant career like Oliver North. Abdurrahman Wahid is also not a president who was directly elected by a majority vote of the people. He was appointed head of state as a compromise between members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) who were divided in their support for Habibie and Megawati Soekarnoputri.
That is why the chance of President Abdurrahman escaping from a special session of the MPR, due to events surrounding Buloggate, may be quite narrow. Moreover, there is still the matter of funds donated from the Sultan of Brunei, which were not used in a transparent fashion, known as Bruneigate. Besides that, there is the incessant accusation that the government’s special treatment of several troubled conglomerates is connected to their donations to the political coffers of President Abdurrahman.
These scandals demonstrate the tendency of those at the palace to use any means to achieve what they consider to be their noble goals. It is as if Gus Dur has forgotten that using 'darkroom' tactics will only cause the number of sandal mongers to increase among those who are intently focused upon their prayers.
As a democratically elected president, Gus Dur should realize that the essence of democracy is the conviction that only a valid process can guarantee a valid outcome. For sure, democratic political competition requires funds and other resources, but that does not mean that secretly using public funds is justifiable. The problem is the definition of what is good is not always the same, and the public has the right to know the details regarding the allocation of public funds.
Stealing sandals from a mosque is a sin. This is irrespective of whether the sandals are for one’s own needs or are given to those who are considered more in need of them.
(JK)