(Bloomberg) -- Former Indonesian Trade Minister Thomas Lembong, a strong critic of the government, has been named a suspect in a corruption case involving sugar imports back in 2015, a move that some say may be politically motivated.
The Attorney General’s Office alleges Lembong of breaching rules for granting import permits for 105,000 tons of raw sugar to privately-owned PT AP, at a time when the country was in surplus of production, said Abdul Qohar, the director for special crimes investigation, in a press briefing on Tuesday evening. He also cited a 2004 ministerial regulations restricting certain sugar imports to state-owned companies.
“The import was granted without prior approval from relevant institutions and done so without the Ministry of Industry’s recommendation to confirm the real demand for sugar in the country,” said Qohar. Lembong didn’t respond to questions asked by reporters on Tuesday and his team has not replied to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.
This is the first high-profile case announced under the new President Prabowo Subianto, who took office earlier this month. Lembong was the campaign team co-captain of Prabowo’s contender, Anies Baswedan, in February presidential election.
He also took part in a nationwide protest against a constitutional court ruling that would have allowed the youngest son of Joko Widodo, Prabowo’s predecessor and ally, to run for gubernatorial election. Jokowi’s older son Gibran Rakabuming Raka ran in tandem with Prabowo in the elections to become Indonesia’s vice president.
“It continues a trend of selectively going after corruption cases for political expediency,” said Vedi Hadiz, director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. “Political opponents are being put under pressure so that all would tow the government’s line.”
This could have a chilling effect on critics of Jokowi and Prabowo, who already enjoys a majority in parliament.
Lembong, who was also the writer of Jokowi’s famous “Winter is Coming” speech read at the IMF-World Bank Group Meetings in Bali in 2018, often criticized some of the former leader’s policies. He called Jokowi’s mineral downstreaming policy “reckless” and accused the new capital city construction of being non-transparent.
AGO’s Qohar said his office detained Lembong on Tuesday at Salemba Penitentiary in Central Jakarta for a period of 20 days, while waiting for the dossier to be completed.
“The fear is that more so than Jokowi, Prabowo will have the inclination to use authoritarian methods such as these to get his way, although the Jokowi government had made it easier for him to do so by paving the way for them,” Hadiz said.
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