He is also a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, the current opposition to new president Prabowo Subianto and the huge coalition he stitched together before his October inauguration.
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Ahmad Usmarwi Kaffah, a spokesman for the Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections ministry, told journalists in Jakarta on Monday that Indonesian legislation provided for presidential discretion.
He added that the secrecy surrounding Sunday’s transfer was the request of the Australian government because “they did not want it to be noisy out there”.
Asked if Australia now had an obligation to consider future repatriation requests from the Indonesian government, Kaffah responded: “Yes, it is called the reciprocal principle.”
The transfer of the five remaining Bali Nine members is a sensitive issue because of Muslim-majority Indonesia’s revulsion to drug crime. Even so, the news in Indonesia has been quickly overtaken by other political stories.
Criticism of the powerful new president has also been muted, in contrast to when former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) reduced the sentence of Australian Schapelle Corby. A headline at the time on major news site Kompas declared that her “release embarrasses Indonesia”.
Indonesia’s National Movement Against Narcotics even tried to challenge the president’s decision in court. It has not released a statement this time around.
In 2015, SBY’s successor Joko Widodo famously refused to spare the lives of so-called ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran despite hard lobbying from the Australian government, which Widodo’s closest aide criticised as “unacceptable … warnings and the thinly veiled threats”.
The pair’s Indonesian lawyer, Professor Todung Mulya Lubis, told this masthead he was pleased to see the remaining men finally sent home.
“I understand there is a suggestion to make a law to facilitate the transfer of prisoners, but that will take time. For this one, I think we can accept it on the basis of humanity,” he said.
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“I remember when I was still handling Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran that this issue was being discussed, whether transfer of prisoners could be approved or considered. But there were no commonalities found [between Australian and Indonesian governments].
“It is only now that it can be carried out. I welcome the good steps made by the current Indonesian government.”
Prabowo’s approach has been at odds with his predecessors. On Friday he promised to pardon close to 44,000 prisoners to help relieve pressure on Indonesia’s crowded jails. The figure is about 30 per cent of the total prison population.
Those to be pardoned include Papuan independence activists and people convicted of non-trafficking drug crimes.
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