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JAKARTA: Indonesian anti-graft activists called for protests on Tuesday over what they see as the president's ham-fisted efforts to whitewash a major corruption scandal involving top police and prosecutors.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono stunned activists late Monday when he delivered a rambling, barely coherent reply to advice from his own fact-finding team to punish senior law enforcers and reform the judiciary.
The President has been under intense pressure to sack his police chief and attorney general and order them to drop allegedly bogus criminal cases against two senior investigators from the country's corruption watchdog.
In a nationally televised speech, Yudhoyono again pledged to reform the justice system but insisted he could not interfere in criminal cases, even though he admitted the public had lost trust in the police and the courts.
"I'm not allowed to, and will not, enter this area because stopping investigations is the domain of the investigating body, the police, and ending prosecutions is the domain of prosecutors," he said.
But because of the public distrust in the legal system and the threat the scandal posed to "social unity", he said the "better option and solution... is for the police and prosecutors not to bring this case to court".
His fact-finding team had recommended disciplinary action against law enforcers implicated in the conspiracy and the withdrawal of all criminal allegations against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputies.
Yudhoyono's comments bewildered anti-corruption activists who had been hoping he would seize his mandate, renewed in a landslide election in July, to genuinely crack down on rampant corruption.
"All the promises about fighting corruption were just jargon to fish for votes to win the election. He has failed in carrying out his duties as president" Indonesia Corruption Watch court monitoring coordinator Illian Deta Arta Sari told AFP, adding protests were being planned for later this week.
KPK deputy heads Bibit Samad Riyanto and Chandra Hamzah still face charges of bribery and abuse of power which police refuse to drop despite evidence of an alleged conspiracy to pervert justice and sabotage the KPK.
Explosive KPK wiretaps played in court earlier this month apparently caught senior police and prosecutors conspiring with the brother of a corruption suspect to frame the KPK deputies, fuelling weeks of public outrage.
- AFP/so
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