The Insider Specialists, Part Two

Further Notes from a Coffee Shop: The Penalty

The next morning, the retired gentleman was already sitting on the same bench before I could order my coffee. He opened the conversation with the question I had heard from almost every table in that coffee shop: they say the sentence is death, don’t they? A student in the corner nodded firmly, the motorbike-taxi driver beside him shook his head doubtfully, and the fritter seller said she had read it in a post, though she could not say whose. I brewed my coffee slowly, because a question that size should not be answered in a hurry. A coffee shop has no statutes, but it does have one good habit: it checks what is in the glass before drawing conclusions about the taste.

Let us separate two things that the timelines often mix up, like sugar and salt in a dark kitchen. The first is opinion. Many commentators and public figures do regard the alleged wiretapping of the President as linked to treason, and some say that the treason provisions carry the death penalty. The second is the official suspicion. According to the investigators and the government, the suspects are currently being charged under the provisions on wiretapping and interception in the new Criminal Code and under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, with a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment, and so far no treason provision has been used. So, for now, the death penalty is an opinion in circulation, not a recorded charge. Both may be debated at the coffee table, but only one of them may serve as the basis for a verdict.

The coffee shop has a simple rule for this: the menu and the bill. If we order a plate of fried rice, the owner may not charge us the price of lobster merely because another customer at the next table shouts that the fried rice ought to have been lobster. In criminal law the rule is much the same: a judge rules on the provisions that have been charged and proved in court, not on whichever provision is being called out loudest outside the building. That is what is known as the principle of legality, which keeps punishment from being decided by anger. The investigators and prosecutors may of course add or change the charges if they find new evidence, but that is a matter of proof, not of wishing. For now, as long as the provisions concern wiretapping, the highest penalty is already clearly written down, and while the process runs, the presumption of innocence continues to apply to everyone.

Of course, the word treason has a certain appeal. It is a big word that sounds like the strike of a gong, and whoever utters it at once sounds like a person who understands history. But courts do not love big words. Courts love evidence, and the heavier the provision, the heavier the elements that must be proved. Calling something treason on a timeline takes two seconds and one thumb. Proving it in court takes case files, witnesses, experts, and a patience rarely found in people who are angry. So I made one note in the margin of our coffee shop’s dictionary: the word that goes viral fastest is not always the word that stands strongest in the courtroom.

If we want to know how punishment has been handed down in history, we can learn from those who went before. Sejanus, in Rome two thousand years ago, was executed on the very day the emperor’s letter was read out in the Senate, with no lengthy trial and no chance of appeal. Kim Jae-gyu, who shot President Park Chung-hee in 1979, was sentenced to death and hanged in May 1980. Both lived in times when the law moved as fast as a change in the wind and bowed to the whims of rulers. From them we learn that a death sentence that falls quickly is seldom a sign of justice; it is more often a sign that the law is not yet fully free.

Peru offers a far more complicated picture. Vladimiro Montesinos, intelligence chief of the Fujimori era, was not sentenced to death, but the sentences that piled up over two decades leave him serving more than thirty years in prison. His first sentence, in 2002, was nine years for usurping a post he had never officially held. Then came 20 years in 2006 for selling illegal weapons to the FARC, and 15 years for several corruption cases. His heaviest sentence, 25 years, was imposed not for the bribery videos or the wiretaps but for the Barrios Altos massacre and the murder of the journalist Pedro Yauri. His superior, Fujimori, was sentenced to 25 years in 2009 over massacres carried out by the Grupo Colina death squad, in addition to his sentence for corruption. The lesson is plain: the recording scandal that brought down a government is not always the basis for the heaviest punishment, because the heaviest charges often come from other crimes uncovered afterwards.

In Turkey, the sentences in the Erdoğan wiretapping affair varied with the provisions used. In the case of the listening devices in the Prime Minister’s office and residence, two former police officers were each sentenced to seven years and six months’ imprisonment out of the 13 people tried, while eight defendants were acquitted of all charges. But in the mass trial that followed, 131 defendants received sentences ranging from three years and nine months to 45 years, and a former police intelligence chief was sentenced to 18 years for leading an armed terrorist organisation, on top of more than seven years for illegal wiretapping. The figures leapt once terrorism provisions entered the indictment. That is where the complication lies: the heavy sentences were handed down in an atmosphere of sweeping purges, and the defendants, along with some observers, considered the proceedings politically motivated. So the weight of a verdict is not necessarily the measure of a process’s fairness.

Mark Felt, the famous Deep Throat, lived out the most ironic fate of all. The man who helped bring down President Nixon over illegal surveillance was himself found guilty in November 1980 of conspiring to violate citizens’ civil rights through warrantless searches. The judge imposed a fine of 5,000 dollars and no prison term. His colleague, Edward Miller, was fined 3,500 dollars, and President Reagan pardoned both men in 1981 while their appeals were still pending. Some call it wise justice; others call it proof that closeness to power is always useful, even after that power has changed hands.

South Korea shows the most careful road. President Yoon was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection, not to the death penalty the prosecutors had sought. His defence minister was sentenced to 30 years and his national police chief to 12. The verdicts came through a long and open process, and some defendants were acquitted because their criminal intent had not been proved. Of all these stories, the death penalty fell in an era when the law was not yet free of the ruler, whereas in more settled countries even the heaviest verdicts must travel through statutes, evidence and appeals.

One question still hangs over our table, and it concerns not provisions but the person who placed the order: for whom, exactly, was all this done? The investigators have not answered it, the Palace admits it does not yet know the details of the motive, and the politicians can only ask in ever louder voices. Where answers are absent, speculation always grows like mushrooms in the rainy season. Some suppose this was a solo effort, some suppose it was the work of a gang, and some suppose there was another hand behind the scenes, whose hand nobody can say. Honest satire can note only one thing: the question is legitimate, but the answer is legitimate only if it is born of evidence. Pointing a finger without a case file is like setting off firecrackers in a paper warehouse. Let the investigators open the drawers one by one, and let the people wait patiently for whoever’s name is truly written inside, great or small, near or far, because good justice does not look at family photographs.

The conclusion from our coffee table today is therefore simple. Punishment is not determined by the size of public anger or the depth of the ruler’s sense of betrayal, but by the provision that is proved, the strength of the evidence, and the independence of the court. History’s range of punishments is very wide, from the gallows, to decades in prison, to fines and pardons, and the difference almost always comes from differences in provisions and in how a state treats its own law. That is why our own case too should be judged by the provisions that are eventually proved, not by whichever term is loudest on the timeline. The most expensive thing in a great case is not the sentence but the people’s trust that the process is clean.

As in the first part, we leave one note in the margin of the dictionary. This satire is aimed at the culture of insiders: the habit of treating power as personal property, a network of friends as a state institution, and closeness as immunity. It is not aimed at the President, who needs our support so that this country can keep running on the right track. We have made no suspect’s name a subject of mockery, because good mockery targets patterns, not persons. And we have passed no verdict, because a coffee shop has only a spoon that clinks against the rim of a glass, not a judge’s gavel.

The coffee in my glass was down to its grounds when that second conversation ended. I went home with a conviction a little calmer than yesterday’s: that anger may light a conversation, but only the law may close it. And once more, may Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala always protect President Prabowo Subianto, keep him healthy and safe, and strengthen him to lead this country with justice and trustworthiness. May this case also be handled openly, fairly and in accordance with the law, so that the guilty are punished in due measure. Amen, O Lord of the World.

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The Insider Specialists

Notes from a Coffee Shop on House Keys and the Map of One’s Own Fate

That morning, at my regular coffee shop, a retired gentleman opened the conversation with a sentence that sounded like a brand-new proverb: they used to say they were loyal. We all nodded, for the word is uttered very often, especially by those most skilled at hiding another meaning behind their words. It turns out, said the old man as he sipped his black coffee, that their definition of loyalty is rather unusual. I wrote it down carefully, because a good morning coffee always goes best with a new dictionary.

According to the dictionary we were compiling on that wooden table, loyalty does not mean guarding the house, but memorising where all the house keys are kept. Loyalty does not mean protecting one’s superior, but knowing what is in the superior’s drawer before the superior has opened it. Loyalty does not mean serving the nation, but serving a network of friends, as though the republic were merely a WhatsApp group of power alumni, complete with an admin who never leaves and members who keep sending each other applause stickers. The news circulating lately, about alleged wiretapping of the nation’s highest office, makes the dictionary feel all the more relevant. Of course, everyone concerned remains a suspect, so the presumption of innocence must still be upheld. But satire need not wait for a verdict to ask about patterns, and this pattern is far too interesting to ignore.

What is funny about the insider specialists is the way they walk while power is still close at hand. They stride upright like owners of the future, greeting people with smiles that seem to hold a decree for the next five terms. But when the spotlight swings elsewhere, they suddenly all become victims of circumstance. Nobody was at the wheel. Nobody gave any orders. Nobody knew anything. Yet only yesterday their steps were so confident, as though history were written by the phone numbers saved in their personal contacts. The people naturally wonder: if nobody was at the wheel, who has been driving this great bus called power all the way to such a distant place?

Looking back at history, the insider specialist turns out not to be an invention of the WhatsApp age. Two thousand years ago in Rome, a man named Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, the troops who protected the emperor, was a powerful insider. Emperor Tiberius trusted him so completely that he is said to have called him his partner in toil, and when the emperor withdrew to the island of Capri in the year 26, the running of the government was entrusted to him. He became the most influential and most feared man in the city, even holding the consulship in the year 31. Then, in October of that same year, a letter from Tiberius was read out in the Senate. That very day Sejanus was arrested and put to death, his body thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and his post handed to another man who, naturally, swore to be loyal. Some of the charges against him, such as poisoning the emperor’s son, were raised only long after the events, so historians do not always agree on the details. But one thing is plain: a ruler’s unlimited trust is the kind of capital that evaporates fastest.

Moving to Seoul in 1979, the story grows darker. Kim Jae-gyu, head of the KCIA intelligence agency, had graduated from the military academy in the same year as President Park Chung-hee and is described in many accounts as one of his closest friends. On 26 October that year, at a dinner in a safe house belonging to his own agency, he shot the President dead. The agency had long been known for using wiretapping, arrests and torture without court orders against the regime’s opponents. In the run-up to the event, rumours circulated that he would soon be replaced, while his rivalry with the president’s chief bodyguard grew ever hotter. He was hanged in May 1980. The story teaches something bitter about instruments of surveillance: they are built to watch other people, but in the end they often become weapons pointing back at their makers.

In Peru, the story reads more like a drama of recordings. Vladimiro Montesinos was the de facto head of the intelligence service under President Fujimori, a man who worked behind the scenes for almost ten years. He recorded hundreds of videos of his own meetings, including scenes of himself bribing opposition politicians, and when one of those videos was broadcast in 2000, the scandal brought down Fujimori’s government. The irony is that the President was later convicted of channelling nearly fifteen million dollars of public money to his intelligence chief as a farewell bonus, while Montesinos is said to have once planned an unsuccessful coup against his own superior. He himself ended up in prison facing dozens of cases. From Lima we learn that a person who keeps secret recordings of his superior as a life policy is building insurance whose final premium is paid by everyone, including the superior.

In Turkey, the story is more complicated and has no single agreed version. From around 2013 to 2015, dozens of police officers, including senior officers, were detained over alleged spying on and wiretapping of Prime Minister Erdoğan and his inner circle. The government blamed a network linked to Fethullah Gülen, a former ally of Erdoğan whose followers held important posts in the police and the judiciary. Wiretap recordings leaked onto the internet, three ministers resigned, and Erdoğan called the whole affair a coup attempt, then removed thousands of police officers, judges and prosecutors. Those accused denied it. The police officers said the arrests were politically motivated, and Gülen denied plotting anything. Two versions, two truths, and one lesson: in cases like this the word traitor changes hands very easily, and the truth often gets tapped along with the conversation.

Then there is Washington, which offers a different point of view. Mark Felt, the second-ranking official at the FBI under Nixon, was later revealed to be “Deep Throat”, the secret source who helped the Washington Post expose the Watergate scandal until Nixon resigned in 1974. His identity came out only thirty years later, when he himself was frail with age. He is said to have hoped earlier to succeed Hoover as FBI director, only to be passed over by Nixon. Some call him a courageous leaker who exposed the wrongdoing of those in power; others see personal ambition behind it. The case matters because it shows that an insider’s leak can be labelled treason or heroism, depending on what it exposes and how strong the evidence is. Motive and evidence therefore matter more than the label.

And finally, there is a story from the opposite side: the insider who was too obedient. In December 2024, President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea declared martial law. In February 2026, a court of first instance sentenced him to life imprisonment on charges of leading an insurrection, even though the special prosecutor had asked for the death penalty. His defence minister was sentenced to thirty years, his national police chief to twelve, and several other officials received varying terms, while two defendants were acquitted because evidence of criminal intent was insufficient. The judge held that these officials had a duty to refuse unlawful orders. The lesson is clear for those who think blind loyalty is a shield: being loyal to a person does not erase the duty to be loyal to the Constitution. Another lesson is no less important: even in the gravest of cases, the court weighed each defendant one by one, separating the guilty from those for whom evidence fell short, and did not impose the heaviest penalty merely because it was demanded, let alone because of cheering outside the courthouse.

From Rome to Seoul, from Lima to Ankara, the script sounds much the same even as the actors change. First, allies can turn into enemies at a speed never calculated in any cooperation proposal. Closeness to a ruler is never an insurance policy, least of all for those who hold the keys, the drawers and the recordings. Second, people who know too much live in perpetual danger, both for their superiors and for themselves, because knowledge unsupervised by law quickly turns into a bargaining chip. Third, traitor is a heavy word that is easily abused. The Turkish case and the story of Felt remind us that the label must be proved in a fair court rather than merely shouted, for today it is used to punish the guilty and tomorrow it may be used to cleanse political rivals.

Fourth, what ultimately saves a country is not loyalty to persons but the strength of institutions. South Korea’s courts were able to try a president, ministers and a police chief together, and Peru eventually tried its intelligence chief and its president in separate proceedings. A strong institution does not depend on who happens to be close to the ruler. Fifth, this comparison has its limits. The case in our own country is still running; the person concerned still has the status of a suspect, and officials themselves have not been unanimous about whether to call it treason or not. For that reason, this satire does not claim that his fate will surely be that of Sejanus or Kim Jae-gyu. It says only that history likes to repeat the same script to those who refuse to read it.

Back in our own country, Indonesia, whether such conduct deserves to be called treason or should be classed as some other criminal offence, I leave to legal experts and the courts. It is said that even among officials the terminology is disputed. A coffee shop has no judge’s gavel, only a small spoon that clinks against the rim of a glass. All we have is a simple hope: that this matter will be investigated thoroughly, openly and fairly, from source to outflow, without fear or favour and without regard to who appears in the family photo. If guilt is proved, let the law speak in due measure. If it is not, let the law itself clear the name. That is what the law is for: it must be higher than no one, but it must be lower than no one either.

The irony is that they may have lived too long in the world of insiders, until they forgot that in a democracy there is no insider higher than the law. They imagined that loyalty could be inherited like furniture. They imagined that influence was eternal like an inscription. They imagined that closeness to one ruler could serve as insurance against the next, complete with a policy whose expiry date nobody ever checked. The history of politics is always cruel to arrogance of that kind. It likes to remind us that the seat of power is not nailed to the floor. Today you whisper in the ruler’s ear; tomorrow you sit in the interview chair.

And the people can only laugh bitterly, as bitterly as the coffee without sugar on our table. Well done, said the retired gentleman: for years you were busy mapping other people’s strength, only to fail to read the map of your own fate. That is the classic tragedy of the players behind the stage. They were so sure they controlled the story that they forgot that in the end they too can become minor characters written out of the script. The true author of the script, in a democracy, is not a handful of people in a closed room but the law, the constitution, and the people, who in the end always come to watch, bringing their own coffee.

We also did not forget to leave one important note in the margin of that dictionary. This satire is aimed at the culture of insiders: the habit of treating power as personal property, a network of friends as a state institution, and closeness as immunity. It is not aimed at the President, who is in fact the one who needs our support so that this country can keep running on the right track. A leader surrounded by too many insiders does need extra vigilance, and that vigilance is best helped by support, prayer and healthy public oversight, not by whispers behind the stage.

The coffee in my glass was down to its grounds when that morning’s conversation ended. I went home with one simple conclusion: this country does not need more insider specialists, but more citizens who believe that the law applies to everyone, from the coffee shop to the highest office. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala always protect President Prabowo Subianto, keep him healthy and safe, and strengthen him to lead this country with justice and trustworthiness. Amen, O Lord of the world.

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