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| After being returned from Colombia, former Democratic Party treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin dominated the news. He is now on trial for corruption over a SEA Games bribery scandal. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal) |
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The past
year offered up a bounty of prime headline fodder, with plenty of people
stepping into the glare of the public spotlight, willingly or not, to capture
the nation’s attention.
From the
twists and turns in the globe-spanning saga of a corruption fugitive and the
seedy revelations behind the lavish lifestyle of a high-flying banking
executive to the meteoric rise of a lip-synching wonder, 2011 was never short of
newsmakers.
Muhammad
Nazaruddin
The person
who arguably hogged the most headlines and TV airtime this year was Muhammad
Nazaruddin, who at the start of 2011 was being feted as part of the new
generation of savvy youngsters rising through the ranks of the ruling
Democratic Party.
In
mid-April, however, things began unraveling for him when a fixer caught during
a bribery bust at the Youth and Sports Affairs Ministry revealed that she
worked for Nazaruddin and that she had been ordered to facilitate a bribe to a
ministry official to secure the contract to build the athletes’ village for the
Southeast Asian Games.
On May 23,
he fled for Singapore, a day before the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)
applied for a travel ban against him. Once abroad, he began leveling a rash of
accusations against other Democrats, including party chairman Anas Urbaningrum.
He was
arrested in Cartagena, Colombia, in August and repatriated, but the controversy
rages on. In his ongoing trial, the former Democrat continues to drop names.
Diani
Budiarto
Undoubtedly
one of the most polarizing figures in the news this year was Diani Budiarto,
the mayor of Bogor. Backed by Islamic hard-liners and lambasted by almost
everyone else, his term in office has been defined by his controversial
decision to seal off the GKI Yasmin church and prevent parishioners from using
it.
Although in
possession of a valid building permit issued in 2006, the church was sealed off
by the city in 2010 on the grounds that church officials had falsified the
signatures on the petition required to get the permit.
The Supreme
Court in January ruled against the revocation of the permit and ordered the
church reopened. However, Diani has refused to comply, offering up a range of
excuses, including that churches cannot be built on streets with Islamic names.
Nor did it
help his reputation when, in August, the 56-year-old mayor married a
19-year-old woman — his fourth concurrent wife.
Throughout
the year, the GKI Yasmin congregation continued to be harassed by mobs of
conservative Muslims every Sunday as it attempted to hold services outside the
sealed-off building.
This
Christmas, the congregation was once again blocked from going near the church
and forced to hold Mass at a member’s house. If the stalemate holds, they will
be facing another Christmas without a church this time next year.
Malinda Dee
One of the
most outlandish and literally larger-than-life characters to make the news this
year was Inong Malinda Dee, a Citibank relationship manager who was arrested in
March for allegedly embezzling Rp 17 billion ($1.8 million) from customers.
Prosecutors later revised the figure up to Rp 40 billion.
In the
ensuing probe, police seized two Ferraris, a Hummer and a Mercedes sports car
from her. It was also revealed that she had undergone extensive breast augmentation
surgery, as well as a procedure to implant silicone in her vagina. During her
incarceration prior to her trial, she had to be hospitalized for several weeks
because of complications from the implants.
Her trial,
now under way, has revealed how she allegedly siphoned large amounts of money
from clients and laundered it through accounts belonging to her sister and
brother-in-law. These two are also on trial, as is Malinda’s much younger
common-law husband, actor Andhika Gumilang.
Angelina
Sondakh
Another
high-profile woman making waves was Angelina Sondakh, a former Miss Indonesia
and currently a House legislator with the Democratic Party.
Angelina
garnered nationwide sympathy back in February when her husband, fellow
legislator and former actor Adjie Massaid, died of a heart attack at just 43.
But that sympathy quickly disappeared when the SEA Games scandal broke and
Angelina was one of several legislators accused of taking kickbacks from the
project. Though questioned by the KPK, she has not been named a suspect.
Earlier
this month, it was revealed that Angelina was involved in a “personal, close
relationship” with a married investigator on loan to the KPK from the police.
Norman
Kamaru
Long
criticized as among the nation’s most corrupt institutions, the police force
received a welcome, though brief, reprieve this year through Norman Kamaru, a
young officer with the Mobile Brigade in Gorontalo province.
In late
March, a video of Norman lip-synching and dancing to the popular Hindi song
“Chaiya-Chaiya” went viral on YouTube (to date, it has been viewed more than
three million times).
The
official reaction was one of outrage, with the National Police saying Norman
would be punished for “naughty, childish behavior.” They quickly relented,
however, following massive public support for the officer.
Norman was
jetted into Jakarta for a whirlwind tour of popular music and talk shows. But
he was soon focusing more on his foray into the entertainment industry than on
his job, giving rise to tensions with his superiors.
In
September he tendered his resignation from the force, and after a standoff over
whether he should pay back his training costs, the police finally gave him a
dishonorable discharge this month for dereliction of duty.
Irfan
Bachdim
Another
young sensation this year was Irfan Bachdim, the half-Dutch heartthrob
nationalized and recruited to the national football team.
It was in
December last year that he captured the nation’s attention with his model-good
looks and electrifying skills on the pitch during the Asean Football Federation
Suzuki Cup.
Throughout
2011, he has appeared in numerous movies and commercials and been the subject
of intense media scrutiny over his relationship with Indonesian-German lingerie
model Jennifer Kurniawan, the sister of one of his teammates, Kim.
In October,
though, things soured for Irfan when he was dropped from the under-23 team,
after failing to show up to practice because he was doing a commercial shoot.
Marzuki
Alie
Politics
dominated much of the national debate this year, and front and center for much
of it was Marzuki Alie, the House speaker from the Democratic Party.
Marzuki
started the year out under a cloud, facing heavy criticism both from the public
and from inside the House over his insistence on pushing ahead with a plan to
build a costly new office tower for legislators.
In April,
relenting to the public outcry, Marzuki finally pulled the plug on the project,
but not until $2.5 million had already been spent in the planning phase.
The speaker
also courted much ridicule this year for his many gaffes, from calling a
caterpillar infestation in Java and Bali a biblical-style “warning from God” to
suggesting that staff from the United Nations Development Program should vacate
their offices in the legislative building because the UNDP was a “foreign
nongovernmental organization.”
He also put
his foot in it in February, at the height of public indignation over the
mistreatment of Indonesian migrant workers, by suggesting they were hurting the
country’s reputation. “Some of them can’t iron properly, so it’s natural if the
employer ends up landing the hot iron on the migrant worker’s body,” he said.
Tifatul
Sembiring
Another
politician seldom out of the headlines was Tifatul Sembiring, the communication
and information technology minister from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The
minister started the year the way he ended 2010, with a campaign to get
Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, to install
porn-blocking filters for its services. Round one went to Tifatul, with RIM
complying ahead of the mid-January deadline.
His
antiporn victory, however, was soured by a scandal in April in which a PKS
legislator was caught watching pornography on his tablet computer during a
plenary session of the House.
Tifatul,
usually vocal about such matters, took much flak for not weighing in.
In
December, he went after BlackBerry again, this time threatening to shut down
its Internet service because it had not yet complied with an order to set up a
data center in the country.
Orangutan
While the
politicians may have been monkeying around, things were far more dire this year
for the orangutan, the iconic, and endangered, red apes of Sumatra and Borneo.
The year
started out positively enough with the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
getting the go-ahead in April to release captive orangutans back into the wild,
following a nine-year hiatus marked by zero releases.
A month
later, though, it was revealed that the concession in which the 1,200 animals
were to be gradually released was rife with illegal logging and poaching
activities. From there, things only got worse. In November, a study showed that
villagers in Kalimantan were responsible for the deaths of 750 of the apes over
the past year. Days later, disturbing news emerged from East Kalimantan that an
oil palm company there had ordered the slaughter of dozens of orangutans and
other primates it deemed pests.
Komodo
The year
was more mixed for another iconic Indonesian animal, the Komodo dragon.
In March,
Surabaya Zoo, notorious for the high rate of deaths among its animals, reported
that three juvenile dragons went missing, possibly stolen for the lucrative
illegal trade in exotic species. Sure enough, in October police arrested a man
for trying to sell one of the animals.
A month
later, an adult dragon was found dead at the zoo, with the cause of death
believed to be food poisoning from consuming items thrown to it by visitors.
But there
was also good news, of sorts, for the animal in its natural habitat. Komodo
National Park was in November named to the provisional list of the New Seven
Wonders of Nature.
The
recognition, however, was tainted by the long and testy nature of the
competition, which saw the organizer, the N7W Foundation, drop the Culture and
Tourism Ministry as the official supporting partner for Komodo’s bid over a fee
dispute. In the end, the park made it into the final seven.
