The People, Events That Made Our Year

Jakarta Globe, Nurhayat Indriyatno, December 31, 2011

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.