Montreal. An assured pole-to-flag win, without safety cars or strategy blunders, was just what Lewis Hamilton needed in Canada on Sunday – even if relief was too strong a word.

“Did I need this? I think so. I think so,” the Formula One world champion told the crowd on the podium after his fourth win in seven races this year and the expansion of his overall lead to 17 points.

“I love Montreal. I love this track; I love the city and really just a fantastic weekend and great to get back on the top step.”

In Monaco, the previous race two weeks ago, a needless late pit stop robbed Hamilton of victory and handed it instead to Mercedes teammate and closest title rival Nico Rosberg.

Montreal, a favorite track where the Briton had won three times before including his first victory in Formula One back in 2007, allowed him to reclaim some of the lost points and get back to where he wanted to be.

The feeling, Hamilton emphasized, was not relief, however. “I don’t feel I needed to be relieved,” he said. “I was quickest all of the previous race weekend as well.

“Obviously we had the problem which enabled Nico to win the race but otherwise generally I had good pace for the last two races,” added the double world champion.

“So it’s not a relief, it just feels good to continue with good strength and it’s great that the team is continuing to be strong as well and continue to move forward.”

Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff, who found himself in the spotlight after Monaco for what some derided as one of the biggest gaffes in recent F1 history, felt a weight had been lifted off the team’s shoulders.

“I must say that there after Monaco it was very difficult for the team to handle that sometimes,” said the Austrian.

“We were exposed to massive criticism, it looked like all the victories and the world championship was forgotten and suddenly a bunch of idiots were managing the team. The result is a satisfying result considering what happened in Monaco.”

Niki Lauda, the retired triple world champion who is now non-executive chairman of Mercedes F1, said the result was “perfect” for Hamilton.

“He couldn’t have done a better job and that’s it. The whole strategy and whatever we had to produce here was back to normal.”

Rest of the field

Rosberg, who finished second, was never close enough to attack and the rest of the field was so far behind as to be out of sight, with Hamilton lapping all but six of the cars behind him.

Finland’s Valtteri Bottas was third for Williams, a massive 40.6 seconds behind Hamilton, to become the first driver from outside Mercedes or Ferrari to appear on the podium this year. He moved up one place from where he started, beating compatriot Kimi Raikkonen after the Ferrari driver spun following a pit stop.

Raikkonen finished fourth, ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel who fought his way through the field from 18th at the start.

Bottas’s Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa finished sixth after starting 15th.

Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado scored his first points of the season for Lotus in seventh place and Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg limbered up for his Le Mans 24 Hours debut next weekend with eighth place for Force India.

Russian Daniil Kvyat was ninth for Red Bull and Frenchman Romain Grosjean took the final point for Lotus after a late coming together with Manor Marussia’s Will Stevens.

Neither of the McLarens finished the race, with Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso expressing his frustration over the radio at being told save fuel.

Reuters

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Ankara. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of assuming greater powers suffered a major setback on Sunday when the ruling AK Party he founded failed to win an outright majority in a parliamentary election for the first time.

Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular modern leader but also its most divisive, had hoped a crushing victory for the AKP would allow it to change the constitution and create a more powerful US-style presidency. To do that, it would have needed to win two-thirds of the seats in parliament.

Instead, it has been left unable to govern alone for the first time since it came to power almost 13 years ago. It faces potentially weeks of difficult coalition negotiations with reluctant opposition parties as it tries to form a stable government, and the possibility of another early election.

With 98 percent of ballots counted, the AKP took 40.8 percent of the vote, according to broadcaster CNN Turk, down from 49.8 percent at the last parliamentary election in 2011.

“Everyone should see that the AKP is the winner and leader of these elections,” a defiant Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, leader of the AKP, said in a balcony speech to the party faithful at its headquarters in Ankara.

“No one should try to build a victory from an election they lost,” he told thousands of supporters.

The uncertainty sent the lira currency to a record low against the dollar in thin out-of-hours dealing as investors positioned themselves for what is likely to be a turbulent start of trade on Monday.

But for jubilant Kurds, who flooded the streets of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir setting off fireworks and waving flags, there was plenty to celebrate. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) crossed a 10 percent threshold to enter parliament for the first time.

With initial results putting it on around 13 percent, HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas ruled out a coalition with the AKP and said the election outcome had put an end to talk of the stronger presidential powers championed by Erdogan.

“The discussion of an executive presidency and dictatorship has come to an end in Turkey,” he told a news conference in Istanbul, describing the outcome as a victory “for those who want a pluralist and civil new constitution.”

The AKP’s failure to win an overall majority marks an end to more than a decade of stable single-party rule and is a setback for both Erdogan and Davutoglu.

Both men had portrayed the election as a choice between a “new Turkey” and a return to a history marked by short-lived coalition governments, economic instability and coups by a military whose influence Erdogan has now reined in.

“Erdogan is the main loser given that he championed two big ideas: one a switch to a presidential system, the other single-party government,” said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and chairman of the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies.

“Neither of them came about.”

Early election seen

The partial results indicated that the HDP, with its roots in Kurdish nationalism, had succeeded in widening its appeal beyond its Kurdish core vote to center-left and secularist elements disillusioned with Erdogan.

It is now likely to play a significant role in parliament, particularly trying to advance a two-year-old peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which first took up arms in 1984.

Demirtas said earlier that the campaign had not been fair or just. A bombing on Friday killed two people and wounded at least 200 at one of its rallies in Diyarbakir.

The results broadcast by CNN showed the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) would again be the second-biggest group in parliament, with around a quarter of the vote.

Murat Karayalcin, the party’s Istanbul chairman, said the outcome was a “clear no” to the executive presidential system championed by Erdogan, while party spokesman Haluk Koc ruled out a coalition with the AKP.

The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), long seen as the AKP’s most likely partner in any coalition, took around 16 percent of the vote.

Its leader, Devlet Bahceli, all but ruled out a deal with the AKP, saying Turkey should hold a new election if the ruling party was unable to agree a coalition with other opposition parties.

“The first possibility … should be between AKP and HDP. The second model can consist of AKP, CHP and HDP,” he said. “If all these scenarios fail, then early elections must be held.”

A senior AKP official also said a coalition with the MHP was unlikely, and that the ruling party would rather go it alone and try to build support back up ahead of a new, early election.

“If there is an AKP-MHP coalition, then we will not be able to achieve even this level of votes at the next election,” the official said.

The lira has fallen more than 15 percent against the dollar this year on uncertainty about the election outcome, making it one of the worst-performing emerging market currencies.

Many investors had hoped for a weakened single-party AKP government, avoiding the uncertainty of a coalition but without handing Erdogan greater power.

Reuters

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Ankara. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of assuming greater powers suffered a major setback on Sunday when the ruling AK Party he founded failed to win an outright majority in a parliamentary election for the first time.

Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular modern leader but also its most divisive, had hoped a crushing victory for the AKP would allow it to change the constitution and create a more powerful US-style presidency. To do that, it would have needed to win two-thirds of the seats in parliament.

Instead, it has been left unable to govern alone for the first time since it came to power almost 13 years ago. It faces potentially weeks of difficult coalition negotiations with reluctant opposition parties as it tries to form a stable government, and the possibility of another early election.

With 98 percent of ballots counted, the AKP took 40.8 percent of the vote, according to broadcaster CNN Turk, down from 49.8 percent at the last parliamentary election in 2011.

“Everyone should see that the AKP is the winner and leader of these elections,” a defiant Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, leader of the AKP, said in a balcony speech to the party faithful at its headquarters in Ankara.

“No one should try to build a victory from an election they lost,” he told thousands of supporters.

The uncertainty sent the lira currency to a record low against the dollar in thin out-of-hours dealing as investors positioned themselves for what is likely to be a turbulent start of trade on Monday.

But for jubilant Kurds, who flooded the streets of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir setting off fireworks and waving flags, there was plenty to celebrate. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) crossed a 10 percent threshold to enter parliament for the first time.

With initial results putting it on around 13 percent, HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas ruled out a coalition with the AKP and said the election outcome had put an end to talk of the stronger presidential powers championed by Erdogan.

“The discussion of an executive presidency and dictatorship has come to an end in Turkey,” he told a news conference in Istanbul, describing the outcome as a victory “for those who want a pluralist and civil new constitution.”

The AKP’s failure to win an overall majority marks an end to more than a decade of stable single-party rule and is a setback for both Erdogan and Davutoglu.

Both men had portrayed the election as a choice between a “new Turkey” and a return to a history marked by short-lived coalition governments, economic instability and coups by a military whose influence Erdogan has now reined in.

“Erdogan is the main loser given that he championed two big ideas: one a switch to a presidential system, the other single-party government,” said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and chairman of the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies.

“Neither of them came about.”

Early election seen

The partial results indicated that the HDP, with its roots in Kurdish nationalism, had succeeded in widening its appeal beyond its Kurdish core vote to center-left and secularist elements disillusioned with Erdogan.

It is now likely to play a significant role in parliament, particularly trying to advance a two-year-old peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which first took up arms in 1984.

Demirtas said earlier that the campaign had not been fair or just. A bombing on Friday killed two people and wounded at least 200 at one of its rallies in Diyarbakir.

The results broadcast by CNN showed the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) would again be the second-biggest group in parliament, with around a quarter of the vote.

Murat Karayalcin, the party’s Istanbul chairman, said the outcome was a “clear no” to the executive presidential system championed by Erdogan, while party spokesman Haluk Koc ruled out a coalition with the AKP.

The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), long seen as the AKP’s most likely partner in any coalition, took around 16 percent of the vote.

Its leader, Devlet Bahceli, all but ruled out a deal with the AKP, saying Turkey should hold a new election if the ruling party was unable to agree a coalition with other opposition parties.

“The first possibility … should be between AKP and HDP. The second model can consist of AKP, CHP and HDP,” he said. “If all these scenarios fail, then early elections must be held.”

A senior AKP official also said a coalition with the MHP was unlikely, and that the ruling party would rather go it alone and try to build support back up ahead of a new, early election.

“If there is an AKP-MHP coalition, then we will not be able to achieve even this level of votes at the next election,” the official said.

The lira has fallen more than 15 percent against the dollar this year on uncertainty about the election outcome, making it one of the worst-performing emerging market currencies.

Many investors had hoped for a weakened single-party AKP government, avoiding the uncertainty of a coalition but without handing Erdogan greater power.

Reuters

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Reuters

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Reuters

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Paris. There were no jeers this time as Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka defied the odds to win the French Open with a courageous 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 victory over world number one Novak Djokovic in an enthralling final on Sunday.

The eighth seed, booed by the crowd when he played French opponents this year, handed Serbian Djokovic his third defeat in three Roland Garros finals to add a second Grand Slam to his 2014 Australian Open title.

“I played the match of my life, it’s hard to believe. Playing against Novak was one of the biggest challenges. I know how much he wanted this Roland Garros,” Wawrinka said courtside.

“It was a crazy atmosphere these two weeks. I’d like to thank you.”

Wawrinka used his superb one-handed backhand to devastating effect, hitting flat groundstrokes that wore down eight-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic, who was looking to complete a career slam in Paris.

He sealed victory on his second match point with his 60th winner, a flashing backhand down the line that made him the second Swiss player to prevail at Porte d’Auteuil after Roger Federer in 2009.

Unbeaten on clay this season, Djokovic threatened Wawrinka on his serve early on and he converted his third break chance when the Swiss served a double fault.

The Australian Open champion wasted two set points by playing too casually, and had a break point against him, which he saved with a service winner. He had a third set point that he converted when Wawrinka’s forehand sailed long.

Topsy-turvy

As his first serve percentage dropped slightly, Djokovic faced multiple break points. Wawrinka could not convert four of them in the second set, whacking his racket twice on the net in frustration, but he made the most of his fifth chance – his sixth of the match – on set point to level the tie.

This sent Djokovic into a rage and the Serbian spiked his racket onto the ground, a move that earned him a warning from the chair umpire.

Wawrinka had the upper hand and he broke to love for 4-2 when he slapped a forehand winner after retrieving yet another lame drop shot from Djokovic – his eighth point in a row.

He clinched the third set when Djokovic returned long.

Unable to maintain the pressure, Wawrinka conceded a break in the second game of the fourth set and Djokovic moved 3-0 up.

But Wawrinka rallied and even had two break points for 4-3, which Djokovic saved with a volley and a backhand winner.

In a topsy-turvy encounter, it was fitting that in the following game it was Djokovic who had the break chances. Wawrinka went for his shots and saw off all three.

Djokovic looked like he had lost his game plan and Wawrinka broke for 5-4 with a flashing backhand winner down the line.

Although he saved the first match point, the Serbian had long lost another French Open final after his 2012 and 2014 defeats.

Reuters

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Paris. There were no jeers this time as Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka defied the odds to win the French Open with a courageous 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 victory over world number one Novak Djokovic in an enthralling final on Sunday.

The eighth seed, booed by the crowd when he played French opponents this year, handed Serbian Djokovic his third defeat in three Roland Garros finals to add a second Grand Slam to his 2014 Australian Open title.

“I played the match of my life, it’s hard to believe. Playing against Novak was one of the biggest challenges. I know how much he wanted this Roland Garros,” Wawrinka said courtside.

“It was a crazy atmosphere these two weeks. I’d like to thank you.”

Wawrinka used his superb one-handed backhand to devastating effect, hitting flat groundstrokes that wore down eight-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic, who was looking to complete a career slam in Paris.

He sealed victory on his second match point with his 60th winner, a flashing backhand down the line that made him the second Swiss player to prevail at Porte d’Auteuil after Roger Federer in 2009.

Unbeaten on clay this season, Djokovic threatened Wawrinka on his serve early on and he converted his third break chance when the Swiss served a double fault.

The Australian Open champion wasted two set points by playing too casually, and had a break point against him, which he saved with a service winner. He had a third set point that he converted when Wawrinka’s forehand sailed long.

Topsy-turvy

As his first serve percentage dropped slightly, Djokovic faced multiple break points. Wawrinka could not convert four of them in the second set, whacking his racket twice on the net in frustration, but he made the most of his fifth chance – his sixth of the match – on set point to level the tie.

This sent Djokovic into a rage and the Serbian spiked his racket onto the ground, a move that earned him a warning from the chair umpire.

Wawrinka had the upper hand and he broke to love for 4-2 when he slapped a forehand winner after retrieving yet another lame drop shot from Djokovic – his eighth point in a row.

He clinched the third set when Djokovic returned long.

Unable to maintain the pressure, Wawrinka conceded a break in the second game of the fourth set and Djokovic moved 3-0 up.

But Wawrinka rallied and even had two break points for 4-3, which Djokovic saved with a volley and a backhand winner.

In a topsy-turvy encounter, it was fitting that in the following game it was Djokovic who had the break chances. Wawrinka went for his shots and saw off all three.

Djokovic looked like he had lost his game plan and Wawrinka broke for 5-4 with a flashing backhand winner down the line.

Although he saved the first match point, the Serbian had long lost another French Open final after his 2012 and 2014 defeats.

Reuters

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Jakarta. Indonesia’s shuttlers came away empty-handed from the home leg of badminton’s Superseries tour for a second year running, failing to win a single title at the BCA Indonesia Open.

Greysia Polii and Nitya Krishinda Maheswari, the tournament’s sixth seeds, were in prime position to win the country’s first women’s doubles title at the event since 2001 after a scorching recent run of form, only to crumble, 21-11, 21-10, to eighth-seeded Tian Qing and Tang Jinhua, who are not even regular doubles partners.

Greysia credited the Chinese pair’s speed and blazing attacks for the lopsided score.

“We realize they’d prepared for this game on this day. We know we lost because they were faster on their feet and their attacking was better,” she told badmintonindonesia.org, the website of the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI).

Greysia and Nitya, last year’s Asian Games champions, started out well, building up to an 11-10 lead in the first, but then stalled and were hit for 11 unanswered points.

“At the start we were able to take the lead by executing our game plan, but we got stuck on 11 points,” Nitya said. “In the second game, they began to pile on the pressure and we tried to [cope] but it was just constant attacking and we couldn’t get back into the rhythm that we started with.”

Tian, who with regular partner Zhao Yunlei is ranked fourth in the world, said she was surprised at how little resistance the home favorites, ranked seventh, put up.

“We prepared well, but we never thought we would win this easily,” she said as quoted by the PBSI site. “Greysia and Nitya are a good pair, and they beat two other pairs from China [earlier in the tournament]. Maybe their strength was gone by the time they reached the final.”

Greysia and Nitya’s loss means another barren Indonesia Open for the home team, which also failed to clinch any titles at last year’s event.

In Sunday’s other finals, Japan’s Kento Momota, ranked ninth in the world, beat Denmark’s Jan Ø. Jørgensen, the world number two, in the showpiece men’s singles final, 16-21, 21-19, 21-7.

In the women’s singles, Thailand’s Ratchanok Intanon (6) beat Yui Hashimoto (35), 21-11, 21-10, to end the Japanese player’s fairy-tale run to the final that included a win over world number eight Wang Yihan of China.

Ko Sung-hyun and Shin Baek-cheol of South Korea (10) took the men’s doubles title with a 21-16, 16-21, 21-19 win over Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan of China (7), while it was an all-Chinese affair in the mixed doubles, where world number two Ma Jin and Xu Chen beat top-ranked Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei, 21-17, 21-16.

The Superseries tour breaks for the world championships in August, also to be held in Jakarta, before resuming with the Japan Open in early September.

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Nobody should be above the law in a democratic country that upholds equality before law. So, we should welcome any attempt to make everybody accountable for what they do, including the recent declaration of media mogul and former minister Dahlan Iskan as a graft suspect by the Attorney General’s Office.

Dahlan was declared a suspect on Friday over accusations in irregular construction of 21 power transformers valued at Rp 1 trillion ($74 million) by state utility firm PLN when he served as president director of the company. We should be relieved also that finally the AGO is pursuing corruption cases involving high-profile figures, such as Dahlan, after for many years just following up on cases by the National Police or the Corruption Eradication Commission.

The AGO, rated in many surveys as one of the nation’s most corrupt institutions, is now showing they are functioning by the rule of law. Or are they? If they have a genuine and sincere motive to uphold the law then all of us have reason to cheer. This is what all Indonesians dream: a functional and clean prosecuting body. Together with the police, the AGO is the cornerstone of law enforcement and democracy. Indonesia will not become a true democracy until it has a working and clean police and AGO.

But the AGO’s reputation is so bad that we should question any sudden move they make. Considering that the current attorney general is a member of a political party that is part of President Joko Widodo’s coalition, this institution automatically is very politicized. We have every reason to doubt that naming Dahlan as a suspect is purely inside the legal domain.

Until the AGO proves otherwise, it is guilty of playing politics.

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Jakarta. Allegations of political motives overshadow prosecutors’ recent naming of former State Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan as a corruption suspect, many of whose supporters believe him to be innocent while Dahlan himself said he had been aware he might be facing graft charges.

Dahlan was declared a suspect on Friday over accusations of irregular construction of 21 power transformers worth Rp 1 trillion ($74 million) by state utility firm Perusahaan Listrik Nagara (PLN) —  a project planned since 2009, when he served as president director of the company, to ensure that Indonesia had a plentiful supply of electricity as the nation’s economy continued to grow.

The project was worked on from 2011 to 2013, when he was appointed as state enterprise minister during former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second term in office.

The Jakarta Prosecutors Office, which has been investigating the case and has named 15 other people as suspects, said two of the transformers were later found to be malfunctioning and 13 others were found to be broken. The Jakarta office of the State Finance and  Development Comptroller (BPKP) has said that the case is estimated to cost the state Rp 33.2 billion.

Suspicion has arisen, however, that Dahlan being named as a suspect was politically motivated. The media mogul, after all, has been widely viewed as a populist and clean authoritative figure, which was believed to have been among the reasons why Yudhoyono appointed him to lead PLN.

Dahlan is the owner of the Jawa Post media group, one of the country’s leading publication firms that is based in Surabaya.

Dozens of his supporters staged a rally at Bungkul Park in the East Java capital on Sunday, gathering signatures on a white banner that organizers said were aimed at providing “moral support” for the media mogul.

Ita Nasyi’ah, an initiator on Twitter of the #SaveDahlanIskan movement, said the group was aiming to collect as many as 10 million signatures from across Indonesia.

“We’re targeting to break the Muri records with these signatures,” Ita said, referring to the Indonesian version of the Guinness World Records.

Hundreds of visitors at the park were seen signing the banner, Indonesian news portal tempo.co reported.

Ita said similar activities would be held in other big cities in Indonesia, including in the national capital Jakarta.

“Nobody told us to do this. This is a spontaneous action,” she said.

Not everyone thinks Dahlan is innocent, though. A man who refused to sign the banner said, “I don’t want to give my signature. Dahlan is a corruptor. Why should we support him?”

The executive director of the Civic Circle for Indonesia (LIMA), Ray Rangkuti, is among those who believe that a political motive is behind the prosecutors’ move to charge Dahlan.

He said the Attorney General’s Office was probably targeting officials under Yudhoyono’s regime so that the former president would tone down his criticism against the current government’s policies. The AGO is led by Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo, whose appointment by President Joko Widodo sparked criticism because Prasetyo was affiliated with the National Democrats (Nasdem), a member of the ruling party coalition.

Antigraft activists have expressed concerns that Prasetyo’s appointment would politicize the AGO.

“I’ve seen [signs of Yudhoyono's regime being targeted] since the arrest of former Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik, the citing of Ibas’s name in Sutan Bhatoegana’s case, and now Dahlan Iskan’s naming as a suspect,” Ray said.

All the names that Ray mentioned — except for Dahlan — are politicians within Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party. Ibas is a nickname of the former president’s youngest son, Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono.
“These are strong signals for SBY [Yudhoyono] … so that he wouldn’t give the current regime too many problems,” he added.

Aleksius Jemadu, a political observer with Pelita Harapan University (UPH), offered another theory as to why Joko’s administration seems to be targeting Yudhoyono administration officials.

“They may try to corner the old regime to cover the flaws of the current government … to divert people’s attention from criticizing [Joko's administration's policies], to cases involving the old regime,” Aleksius said.

He added that he didn’t believe Dahlan to have stolen the public’s money, although there was a possibility that Dahlan had been guilty of negligence, which cost the state billions of rupiah.

“Why is the AGO coming after his [Dahlan's] case before other cases? There may be indeed [intentional attempts] to corner SBY’s people, although we need more evidence to prove that suspicion,” Aleksius said.

Lawmaker Nasir Djamil, though, dismisses the political motive allegation, saying there was indeed potential for corruption in the construction of power transformers for Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara.

“Prosecutors don’t play political games. Otherwise they shouldn’t be called a law-enforcement institution. The case indeed needs to be scrutinized,” said Nasir, a politician with the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which is both a member of the current opposition bloc and a member of the ruling coalition during Yudhoyono’s era.

House of Representatives deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah, meanwhile, said Dahlan’s status as a suspect was proof of flaws in Indonesia’s antigraft laws, which he said failed to recognize “creativity” of people trying to bypass complicated and often corrupt bureaucracy to make sure that development projects proceeded as planned.

“I suspect that Dahlan was named suspect because he’s a creative person, and the anti-corruption law isn’t friendly with creative people. That is why I’ve been criticizing the KPK [Corruption Eradication Commission], part of my criticism against the law, which is now also used by the AGO,” added Fahri, also from PKS.

In a written statement issued on Friday, Dahlan admitted that he had broken many laws to ensure the execution of power transformer project, adding it was necessary.

He said the power transformers were needed to be built right away to supply electricity to Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara islands.

“I told investigators that I couldn’t stand people’s complaints about the electricity [supply] situation at that time. I even declared several times that I was ready to go to jail if I had to,” Dahlan said.

He added, though, that he was ready to undergo the legal process.

“I’m taking the responsibility because all of those projects were indeed under my responsibility,” Dahlan said, adding he would scrutinize all relevant documents concerning the case.

Further coverage

Editorial: AGO Needs to Prove Being Above Politics

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