REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) should soon inaugurate Commr. Gen. Budi Gunawan as the National Police Chief as the court has ruled in favor of his pretrial suit against corruption charges, his lawyer said.
"We hope the President will inaugurate Budi Gunawan as soon as possible," Razman Nasution noted here on Monday.
Razman urged all sides to see the court's verdict as a victory of law. The verdict was purely based on legal consideration and without any intervention from parties involved, he added.
With the court accepting the National Police chief candidate's pretrial motion, he remarked, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) should stop investigating the alleged corruption case against Budi Gunawan.
"Ideally, KPK should abandon the investigation process," he pointed out.
South Jakarta District Court Judge Sarpin Rizaldi in a final pretrial hearing here Monday accepted Commr. Gen. Budi Gunawan's pretrial motion, affirming that KPK's action naming him a graft suspect had been illegitimate.
"The naming of the applicant (Budi Gunawan) by the defendant (KPK) had been illegitimate and hence has no legal basis," Judge Sarpin Rizaldi stated while reading out the verdict.
The judge also remarked that KPK's letter number 03/01/01/2015 authorizing an investigation into Budi Gunawan's role in a corruption case was also illegitimate.
He also rejected all exceptions conveyed by KPK's lawyers who had reiterated that Gunawan's pretrial motion was premature and full of contradictions and that the pretrial hearing did not have any authority over KPK naming Gunawan a suspect.
The KPK-Police conflict surfaced after the anti-graft body named the sole candidate for police chief, Budi Gunawan, suspect in a corruption case on January 13, 2015.
KPK investigators accused Budi Gunawan of receiving bribes through suspicious transactions when he headed the Police Headquarters' Career Planning Bureau during 2003-2006 and held other posts in police.
Following KPK's move, President Joko Widodo postponed Gunawan's inauguration as national police chief until the court issued its verdict.
Gunawan later filed a pretrial suit challenging KPK's move of naming him a graft suspect.