Page 93 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

78 Chapter 4

transforming its anger into “pity.” Ghalib also updated the president on investiga-
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tions of oil tycoon Arifin Panigoro, one of the regime’s staunchest critics, and another
businessman, possibly Sofyan Wanandi. Commentators interpreted the update as
confirmation that these investigations had been ploys to divert attention from Suhar-
to’s case.
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The taped dialogue was, essentially, a “smoking gun” that belied the Habibie
regime’s professed dedication to justice and reform. Of the many outlets aware of
its circulation, only a small tabloid, Berita Keadilan , had already reported the tape’s
existence, receiving almost no notice. But on February 18, Panji Masyarakat released
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a cover story detailing its full contents.
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The Panji version sold out almost as soon as it hit the streets. By the next day,
xeroxed copies of the report were selling at major intersections for nearly the price
of the entire magazine. Originals were going for six times the cover price. Panji then
printed three times its normal production and still ran short. For the next few weeks,
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it became Indonesia’s must-buy newsmagazine, selling out quickly in Jakarta and
other major cities. The rest of the media, in turn, pumped out endless follow-up
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stories on the case covering nearly every possible angle, from speculation on who
was behind the wiretap and comparisons with the US Watergate scandal to detailed
diagrams of the technical aspects of wiretapping.
Ghalib responded by denying that he had ever had such a conversation. Habibie
effectively contradicted his attorney general by ordering a police investigation to find
out who had tapped his phone, thereby acknowledging the tape’s probable authentic-
ity. Officials also began “hunting for” charges—as a Panji lawyer put it—that could be
filed against the magazine.
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The day after the report’s release, police appeared at Panji ’s office and escorted its
acting chief editor, Uni Zulfiani Lubis, to their headquarters, where they interrogated
her for nearly five hours. The legal basis for the summons was a pre-Independence
law passed in 1946 that barred the “dissemination of untruthful information.”
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However, the purpose of the interrogation, Lubis later explained, was not to attack
Panji ’s reporting per se, but to induce her to name the tape’s source. “From the first,”
she said, “Habibie didn’t deny [it] was his voice. But he wanted General Wiranto to
find out who did [the wiretap].” Her interviewers told her that if she revealed Panji ’s
source, “they would find the guy” who had tapped the phones and leave her alone.
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Lubis said that the interrogation was intense, but she knew that the police and the
government were wary of pushing the situation too far. The officers who came to pick
her up “said they had already prepared [a] letter [declaring] me a suspect. But they
didn’t use it,” possibly fearing public backlash. Lubis remained only a “witness” in
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the investigation, and not a very helpful one.
The police widened their net and, reprising the devastating press crackdown of
1978, summoned fourteen chief editors from other news outlets that had either broad-
cast the recorded conversation or published its transcript. The goal, as with Lubis,
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was to compel these outlets to disclose their sources. Those summoned underwent
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individual questioning because “the police were hoping one would give in.”
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The response from these editors was very different from the media leadership’s
response to similar summonses in 1978. The day after Lubis’s interrogation, she
received a call from Tempo saying that someone from the police was spreading word
that she had already cracked and named her source. But a well-known attorney was
present during the questioning and, with him backing her account, Tempo told her
that they had not believed the rumor. Realizing the dilemma these police tactics could