Throughout the epic legal drama between Indonesia’s House Speaker Setya Novanto and the Corruption Eradication Committee (KPK) over the senior politician’s role in the massive e-KTP corruption case, Novanto’s lawyer, Fredrich Yunadi, has been almost a big a figure as the house speaker himself, aggressively attacking anybody who dares to speak out against his client and even getting the police to arrest a person just for sharing joke memes about Novanto.
While many have made fun of Fredrich’s litigious excesses, few have dared to directly hit back at the high-powered lawyer’s statements. One of the very few is Mohammad Mahfud M.D., an ex-chief of the Constitutional Court widely considered to be one of the country’s most prominent legal scholars. For example, when Fredrich claimed he would report the KPK to the International Human Rights Court, Mahfud tweeted, “Novanto’s lawyer will sue the KPK in the International Human Rights Court — Ha ha ha Fredrich doesn’t understand the function of the International Human Rights Court.”
Pngcara Novanto akan Tuntut KPK ke Pengadilan HAM Internasional — Ha3x Freidrick tak tahu fungsi Pengadilan HAM Int https://t.co/I0hFnUd9gv
— Mahfud MD (@mohmahfudmd) November 18, 2017
He also went after Fredrich and Novanto hard during a recent appearance on the Indonesian Lawyer’s Club TV program, a clip of which has been trending near the top of Youtube in Indonesia.
The latest war of words between the two started yesterday when Mahfud told Kompas that the House Ethics Council should immediately remove Novanto from his position as House Speaker since he could no longer lead parliament while he was sitting in a KPK holding cell after he was arrested last weekend. He also argued that Novanto’s attempts to dodge questioning by the KPK by pretending to be sick as a result of his highly-dubious car crash one week ago was a clear ethical violation in and of itself.
“Setya Novanto’s behavior is an extraordinary violation of ethics. Pretending to be sick. If we declare that Novanto has been pretending to be sick, we are not wrong, we are not violating the law, because in fact the doctor’s examination showed he is not sick. It means he is pretending to be sick,” Mahfud said.
Novanto did complain of still being in great pain from the car accident when he was officially arrested by the KPK (Fredrich had famously declared his client had had a bump on his head the size of a bakpao bun) but the anti-corruption taskforce only arrested and moved the house speaker from his hospital to their holding facilities after a group of impartial doctors from the Indonesian Doctor’s Association (IDI) ran a battery of tests on him and determined he was fit to stand questioning.
Nevertheless, Fredrich did not take kindly to Mahmud saying his client had only been pretending to be sick, and threatened to report the ex-Constitutional Court chief to the police if he could not prove that Novanto wasn’t really injured after the car accident.
“If he cannot prove it, then that’s defamatory, I’ll report it to the police,” Fredrich said as quoted by Tribun.
Once again Mahmud was quick to retort and shot back by saying that the data from the IDI doctor’s tests was excellent proof of his statement as well as lies being told by Novanto, Fredrich and the first team of doctors who treated him at Medika Permata Hijau Hospital (and said he was too injured to be questioned).
“In fact, I will be the one who will report them first so that all of them (Novanto, Fredrich and the hospital staff) will all be investigated. All of them are just a bunch of legal acrobats anyways.”
Unlike the people on social media who shared memes about Novanto, Fredrich can’t hope to intimidate a man like Mahmud with legal threats (and that’s why bullies generally don’t pick on people their own size).
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