Setya Novanto visits his constituents in East Nusa Tenggara in this May 2017 photo. (Photo courtesy of partaigolkar.or.id)
Many Catholics in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara Province, including West Timor, have withdrawn support for national parliamentary speaker Setya Novanto following his arrest on corruption changes.
Setya Novanto, a representative of the province in the national legislature, is accused of corrupt dealings in an electronic identity card project.
The government is said to have lost about US$170 million as a result of underhand dealings.
The Corruption Eradication Commission detained Novanto on Nov. 19.
He was first named a suspect in a related matter in July.
However, in September charges did not proceed in South Jakarta District Court as the result of a pretrial motion.
He is now being held pending further investigation and faces a maximum 20-year prison sentence and up to a US$95,000 fine if convicted.
"We must be critical," said Adrianus Oswin Goleng, a member of the Catholic Students’ Association in Kupang, the provincial capital.
"We do not support him anymore and will not vote for him if he happens to run for another period."
Novanto, a Javanese businessman who has spent most of his life in the province, was first elected as a national legislator in 2004 and has since been twice re-elected. He is a former Catholic who converted to Islam after divorcing his first wife and marrying a Muslim woman.
Government statistics show that Catholic majority East Nusa Tenggara is the third poorest province in Indonesia after Papua and West Papua.
It has a total population of 5.2 million, with 55.4 percent being Catholics.
Irvan Kurniawan, a Catholic layman, said Novanto failed to represent local people.
"He only used the people for his own political interests," he said.