Chairman of Indonesia’s Democratic Party Anas Urbaningrum speaks at a news conference to announce his resignation at the party headquarters in Jakarta yesterday.
AFP/Jakarta
The chairman of Indonesia’s ruling party, Anas Urbaningrum, announced his resignation yesterday after the country’s anti-graft body named him a suspect in a multi-million-dollar corruption case.
“I quit as the chairman of the Democratic Party,” he told reporters in a press conference.
Urbaningrum, 43, was named a suspect Friday for allegedly receiving “gifts or a promise of gifts” in a graft case linked to the construction of the Hambalang sports centre project near Jakarta, worth around 1.17tn rupiah ($120.5mn).
His resignation was widely expected as all Democratic Party officials had recently signed an “integrity pact” to give up their posts if named a graft suspect.
Maintaining his innocence, Urbaningrum said he would go through the necessary legal procedures.
It was widely known that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, patron of the ruling Democratic Party, had not favoured him for the chairman post in 2010, and on Saturday the accused hinted that he believed the graft accusations were related to that. The allegation involving Urbaningrum is the latest scandal to hit the ruling party and is a further embarrassment for the president, who won a landslide victory on his re-election in 2009 on a corruption-fighting platform.
Legal graft cases surrounding the Democratic Party have dogged its popularity, which slumped to a mere 8% in December last year from about 21% in 2009. Elections are due in 2014.
At the beginning of December, the sports minister Andi Mallarangeng, who used to be the presidential spokesman, was forced to resign after being named a suspect in the same case.
He was the first minister to step down over graft allegations since the country’s powerful Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) began operating in 2003 with a mandate to crack down on rampant graft.