Hello, Is It Me You're Looking For ?

The key characters in the narrative had no idea that their phone calls are being recorded. One protagonist, Untung, who's a deputy attorney general, received a call from a middle-aged female lobbyist. The lobbyist (Artalyta) was panicking because Udin, a senior prosecutor (who is working for the deputy AG), had been arrested by the anti corruption agency barely minutes earlier. Artalyta was asking Untung to release Udin , fearing that he will drag her into the case. The call ended with the Untung assuring Artalyta that she will be 'arrested' by his office, therefore preventing the anti corruption agency from arresting her too.

Unfortunately, although it has all the makings of a detective novel or political thriller , the event actually did happen. The case involved the alleged pay off of USD 600,000 from Artalyta to Udin who is leading the state's case against her associate, Sjamsul Nursalim, a well known conglomerate in the bad old Soeharto days. Foreign observers or Indonesians growing up on the diet of the Nixon White House's stories of secret recordings (not too many were seen raising their hands filtered with these categories) are somewhat surprised that there is a tap in the first place.

In your correspondent's knowledge of recent cases, the use of phone taps is the first of its kind. It is not yet known who authorized the recording, whether it is illegal and why is it only started to be used now. These questions are critical because if the evidence using the phone taps are accepted - as they appear to be for the moment - it is possible that these will be used for future cases where 'hard evidence' are likely to be hard to find. These may help the government's stated drive to root out corruption at all levels.

Arguably, the disclosure that a deputy AG (who is tasked with bringing to court all those serial corruptors) is actually striking some kind of deal with a lobbyist, will impact how successful the government will be in rooting out corruption ( with or without the phone taps). This is actually the second time that a deputy AG is implicated in the same case in the last three months (the recording also mentioned the name of a third deputy AG), so there is an impression that the AG's office has been compromised.

What is even more exciting is (and so far no journalists have picked this up) is why it took so long for the tapes to surface (the arrest took place a few months ago, which means that the recording has been sitting idily. Or was it a conscious decision that it only now saw the light of day ?) One potential reason is to further embarass the administration of President S.B. Yudhoyono. On the day of the revelation, Australian PM Kevin Rudd paid his first official visit to Jakarta. This may explain why in the same evening, Vice President Jusuf Kalla went on an offensive and turned the news cycle around by suggesting that this is further evidence of how serious the government is, pointing out that senior government officials are not immune and not above the law.

There is truths to this. In that same week, a former chief of national police, was sentenced for alleged corruption during his ambassadorship to Malaysia. A recent visitor to the Jakarta police office's detention house witnessed a former governor and a former regent being detained (albeit in a nice "cell" , said ). As we hit the press, the president has ordered for a full investigation to the case. What ever the result, it appears that the mobile phone will not be a favourite gadget in prison.