Indonesian leader fires chief of staff a day after his arrest

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto yesterday fired his chief of staff for what his office said could be treason, a day after his arrest with two top police officers on suspicion of wiretapping the president, Cabinet ministers and others.

Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who is not a relative of the president, was among three serving police officers detained and accused of illegally tapping phones of the president, journalists, politicians, businesspeople and more from last year to this year.

Listyo had been national police chief for five years before he became the president’s chief of staff last month.

Former Indonesian national police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo smiles as he arrives at the State Palace in Jakarta on Oct. 1.

Photo: AFP

“This was, of course, carried out by certain rogue individuals, and we are also of the view that what was done may already fall into a category that can be considered an act tending toward treason,” presidential spokesman Prasetyo Hadi told reporters.

“It also tends toward acts that endanger state interests and the safety of the nation’s leadership, including the safety of the head of state,” he said.

The arrests come as Prabowo faces challenges on multiple fronts, from a slumping approval rating amid discontent over his policies to a battle to restore investor confidence amid record stock market sell-offs, a declining currency and warnings of an equities market downgrade by index provider MSCI.

The government has yet to determine the motive for the wiretapping, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correction Yusril Ihza Mahendra said.

Police late on Tuesday said the suspects were being investigated for unlawful wiretaps on the president, state officials, media, politicians, businesspeople, and leaders of mass organizations and non-governmental groups.

They orchestrated the wiretaps without a formal request from investigators and had last month ordered electronic records of their monitoring activities be deleted, police said.

Police initially identified the suspects only by the letters of their names.

Local media named the other two as Ahrie Sonta Nasution, head of national police legal division, and Eko Hadi Santoso, a senior officer at the national police educational institution.

Political analyst Yanuar Nugroho, a visiting senior fellow at Singapore’s Yusof Ishak Institute, said the chief of staff role under Prabowo had diminished in importance and Listyo might have been given the job to take him away from the crucial post of national police chief.

Prabowo needs a police chief he can trust and Listyo “is not the one,” Yanuar said, adding that Listyo was known as a loyalist of former Indonesian president Joko Widodo.