Flowerboard congratulating Budi Gunawan on being named Deputy Police Chief. Photo: Twitter/@coltliqiouz
It looks like Budi Gunawan, once President Joko Widodo’s highly controversial, potentially corrupt, candidate for National Police Chief, may soon be on the national stage once again.
Rumor has it that Budi, whose candidacy was cancelled by Jokowi after a bitter public feud between the police and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), will be named Deputy Police Chief by recently installed National Police Chief Badrodin Haiti.
Just after Budi was announced at Jokowi’s sole candidate for Police Chief, the KPK announced a corruption case against him based largely on his suspiciously “fat” bank accounts, which led to an escalating battle that saw several top KPK officials, including the commission’s former chief, Abraham Samad, forced to step down as well as Jokowi being forced to cancel Budi’s nomination.
However, Budi’s corruption case was dismissed in a very controversial decision made by the South Jakarta District Court during a pretrial motion on on his suspect status.
Budi’s lawyer during the pretrial hearing was Frederich Yunadi. It was Frederich who sent a flowerboard to the National Police headquarters this morning at 10:30am congratulating Budi on being named Deputy Police Chief.
The problem with that is that no official announcements had yet been made regarding who the Deputy Police Chief would be or who the candidates for the position even are.
The flowerboard was removed from public view after just 5 minutes, but plenty of people managed to snap a photo of it before that.
Now it is possible that Frederich simply made a mistake, heard the rumors that Budi might be made Deputy Police Chief and simply jumped the gun with his flowerboard.
But the much more realistic possibility is that the decision has already been made behind closed doors and Budi has already been promised the position.
If that is the case, then it will clearly be seen as a slap in the face to everybody who fought to make sure Budi Gunawan did not become the most powerful policeman in the country, since soon he will be the nation’s number two cop. It’d also be a very sad setback for anti-corruption efforts.
