After House Speaker Setya Novanto managed to win a pretrial motion on Friday to undo the suspect status placed on him by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), many stunned Indonesians could do little but make meme jokes about his ability to get out of every corruption charge leveled at him in his career.
READ: #ThePowerofSetNov: Indonesia’s house speaker dodges corruption charges (again), netizens mock him with memes
But the KPK itself is not giving up, vowing to continue their prosecution of the House Speaker despite the major legal setback.
“The other step we are thinking about, because we are very confident in the evidence we have, is to name him as a suspect once again,” KPK Vice Chairman La Ode Muhammad Syarif as quoted by VOA Indonesia.
Despite Setya’s suspect status having been voided for now, the KPK can still name him a suspect as long as they use different evidence than that which was ruled inadmissible by the judge in the pretrial motion.
In July, the KPK named Setya a suspect in a massive IDR2.3 trillion (US$169 million) graft scandal involving an electronic identity card (e-KTP) project that has already ensnared several other legislators.
In April, the lead KPK investigator in the case, Novel Baswedan, was attacked by two unidentified assailants who threw acid in his face, leaving him blind in one eye. In August, a key witness in the case committed suicide after telling the media his life could be threatened.
Setya has a long history of being accused of corruption but escaping any charges. He famously was forced to step down as House speaker in 2015 after he was recorded allegedly misusing President Joko Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s names to try and secure shares for himself in contract re-negotiations with PT Freeport Indonesia. Setya not only avoided any criminal charges but he was reinstated as house speaker by Golkar last year.
Will #ThePowerOfSetNov prevail again? Perhaps, but one thing Setya definitely can’t do right now is leave Indonesia legally; the KPK recently announced that they are using their powers to extend the travel ban placed on him earlier this year.
