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Sutanto, a calm and collected loyalist to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has never been shy about confronting challenges throughout his illustrious police career, which peaked when he was made the nation’s police chief from 2005 until last year.

He now faces the biggest challenge of his life — heading the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), an institution dominated by agents from the once omnipotent Armed Forces, which still considers the National Police force as its “little brother.”

While it doesn’t help that he is the first policeman to fill a post usually filled by retired Army generals, Sutanto’s persistence in chasing leads linking BIN officers to the 2004 murder of human rights activist Munir Thalib clearly would not have won him any popularity contests among the spies.

Muchdi Purwopranjono, a former BIN deputy chief and Army Special Forces (Kopassus) general, went to court to answer allegations that he masterminded the arsenic poisoning of Munir on a Sept. 7, 2004, Garuda Indonesia flight to Amsterdam.

Judges acquitted Muchdi, but it was the first time that a high-level BIN official had found himself in court. The prosecution alleged that Muchdi had Munir murdered as an act of revenge after he was dismissed from the Special Forces because of the rights activist’s persistent criticism of the alleged kidnapping of activists by Kopassus in the 1998 movement against President Suharto.

“There is hope” that Sutanto’s arrival at BIN may even lead to the reopening of a case that has put BIN under fire, said Choirul Anam, from the Committee of Action and Solidarity for Munir, a group pushing for complete transparency in the Munir murder investigation.

Though Sutanto may have to work hard to win support within BIN, he does bring with him a good track record and political stature, making him a formidable choice for the agency tasked with giving the president the right intelligence on terrorism and other security-related issues.

He definitely has the ear of the president. He has been a close friend to Yudhoyono since their academy days. Sutanto and Yudhoyono both graduated from the military academy in 1973, with the former topping the police academy while the president won the highest honors at the Army academy.

Sutanto was an aide to President Suharto in 1998 and witnessed the downfall of the strongman from close quarters. Sutanto knows the security scene in Jakarta because he was the capital’s deputy police chief until 2000.

Subsequently, he led the provincial police forces in East Java and North Sumatra. As the North Sumatra Police chief, he confronted the gambling barons and drug mafia who infested the province and led a crackdown on the underworld in Medan, the country’s third largest city and a hotbed of vice. In 2005, he led the National Narcotics Agency and continued his crusade against drug dealers.

It came as little surprise to observers when Yudhoyono tapped Sutanto to serve as National Police chief in July 2005. He did not disappoint. In late 2005, his men shot and killed Malaysian-born terrorist mastermind and bomb-maker Azahari Husin, who had played a major role in a string of deadly bombings in the country by the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network.

Nor did Sutanto discriminate. He let antigraft officers arrest his top detective, Suyitno Landung, when it was evident that the officer behind successful anti-terror operations took bribes from a defendant in one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit the nation. Landung became the highest-ranking officer ever investigated by the National Police.

Sutanto’s retirement in 2008 was short-lived. Yudhoyono asked him to root out corruption at state oil company Pertamina, appointing him as a commissioner with one of the richest but most poorly managed of Indonesia’s state enterprises.

His role in the shake-up at Pertamina, which also included the rise of young professionals to the helm of the company, added versatility to his resume and proved he was up to challenges outside the police force.

Yudhoyono’s decision to end the run of Army generals leading the nation’s top intelligence agency and appoint Sutanto has been controversial. Time will tell whether it is a master stroke or a major blunder.