Pamekasan, East Java. Ten inmates at the Pamekasan penitentiary for drug convicts in East Java have tested positive for methamphetamine use, local police announced on Friday night, after screening their urine.

A day earlier, police had broken up an apparent meth party in the prison’s pantry and seized 22 packages of the drug weighing a total of 15,9 grams, as well as two bongs, matches, a mobile phone and six SIM cards.

Officers said the drugs were smuggled into the prison inside peanut shells.

“These are old players — Hartono, Ismail, Junaidi, Tony and Tutuk — the five of them are from Surabaya, and then there’s Alan, Abd Lukman, Muhlisin, Sahad and Fathor, from Mojokerto and Sampang,” said First Insp. Ruslan Hidayat, a spokesman for the Pamekasan Police. “Some of them are serving sentences of four to five years, and there are also those who had just three months left to serve before they would be freed.”

It was immediately clear whether the inmates would now face additional charges.

Police said they were still looking for the person responsible for bringing the drugs inside the penitentiary, presumably a visitor. However, police stressed they would not hesitate to go after their own if an officer or a guard was found to be involved in the scheme.

‘Drug emergency’

President Joko Widodo has vowed to tackle what he has repeatedly described as a “drug emergency” in Indonesia, including by resuming the execution of drug convicts on death row. But authorities have also stepped up efforts to clean up the nation’s prison system.

Earlier this month, authorities arrested two prison guards in separate drug cases.

In the most recent case, the chief warden of Banceuy Penitentiary in Bandung confirmed that one of the prison’s guards, Dedy Romadi, was arrested in Jakarta with 16.3 kilograms of methamphetamine and 778 ecstasy pills.

Reports from the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), which carried out the arrest on May 22, suggested that Dedy was a known drug courier working for an Iranian dealer, who was also arrested during the bust at the Atrium shopping mall in Senen, Central Jakarta.

When BNN officers arrested the pair, they found Dedy in possession of one kilogram of meth. He later led the officers to his boarding room in Bandung, where officers discovered the rest of his stash.

The bust came just over a week since the arrest of a guard from the prison island of Nusakambangan off Central Java, the site of 13 of the 14 executions carried out so far this year. Almost all of those executed were foreign nationals.

In the Nusakambangan arrest, officers caught Bayu Anggit Permana, a guard from the island’s Batu Penitentiary, with 364 grams of meth.

The post Pamekasan Prisoners Test Positive After ‘Meth Party’ appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Surabaya. Amid talk of a pending reshuffle, the Democratic Party leadership says it’s ready to join President Joko Widodo’s cabinet — if chairman Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono gives the go-ahead.

“Party leadership are SBY’s subordinates,”Ruhut Sitompol, spokesman for the Democratic Party’s Central Leadership Board, said on Sunday. “So we have to follow whatever tasks are given to us by the general chairman. If the general chairman agrees, we have to be ready to be positioned anywhere, including within the Working Cabinet, if indeed we’re asked by President Jokowi.”

Asked about the need to reshuffle the cabinet, Ruhut said that is up to the president. “But if he needs people from the Democratic Party, please contact the general chairman,” the politician added.

Ruhut, who had worked for the campaign team of Joko and his running mate, now-vice president Jusuf Kalla, also said he was at some point offered a cabinet seat, but that he refused because “I’m one of SBY’s subordinates and I will not betray him.”

The politician also said that Yudhoyono, Joko’s predecessor, had asked the party leadership to support the current government.

“Every pro-people policy we will surely support,” Ruhut said. “But if mistakes are being made, it is our duty to speak up and come up with a solution.”

‘In the near future’

Kalla, the vice president, said earlier this month that a cabinet reshuffle was imminent.

“Yes, it will happen in the near future,” he said in response to questions from reporters at his office, adding however that he had not yet discussed the matter with Joko.

Kalla conceded that some members of the cabinet had not performed as well as hoped, but declined to identify them.

“We need to improve our performance a lot, so we need people who are capable,” he said.

Questioned separately at the State Palace, however, Joko indicated he knew nothing about a planned reshuffle.

“You should go ask the vice president about that,” the president told reporters.

Naming names

Politicians and observers have already begun singling out ministers they believe have underperformed or who have prioritized the interests of their parties over those of the state.

Kedai Kopi, a discussion group of influential political analysts, recently mentioned three ministers it argued had failed to meet the briefs of their portfolios: Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman, Industry Minister Saleh Husin, and Sofyan Djalil, the coordinating minister for the economy.

The first two are political appointees – Amran was a fund-raiser for Joko’s election campaign and has business ties with Kalla; Saleh is a member of a party in Joko’s coalition – while Sofyan has come in for criticism over a series of economic policies deemed unpopular and protectionist, and a general slowdown in the economy.

Sofyan, however, has defended his performance in office, saying the less-than-stellar macroeconomic factors are beyond his control.

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