Editorial: Abbott pushing too hard in clemency bid for Bali Nine ringleaders

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Photo / Getty Images

Australia's Prime Minister is going to extraordinary lengths to save the lives of the ringleaders of the "Bali Nine" drug smugglers facing execution in Indonesia. Tony Abbott has not confined himself to heart-felt appeals for clemency for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. He has reminded Indonesia of the help it received from Australia after the tsunami of 2004 and offered to swap the pair for three Indonesians jailed in Australia for drug offences.

He says he does not want the case to prejudice Australia's relations with its near neighbour but adds, "We can't just ignore this kind of thing, if the perfectly reasonable representations we are making are ignored by them."

Mr Abbott is right to argue as strenuously as he can against a death penalty imposed on Australian citizens. It is 10 years since the Bali Nine were arrested when four of them were caught at Denpasar airport awaiting a flight to Sydney with 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. Chan was then 21, Sukumaran 24. A decade on death row has reportedly reformed them. Sukumaran has become a painter and a gardener. He gave art and computer lessons to fellow inmates of Kerobokan prison. Chan found God and led church services. Both are said to have counselled prisoners on the dangers of drugs.

Mr Abbott has urged Indonesian authorities to treat them as shining examples of the rehabilitative powers of the country's prisons, saying executing them would would be executing "assets" who could be "allies of the Indonesian Government in its fight against drug crime".

Despite these pleas, Chan and Sukumaran were transferred last week from Kerobokan to the Nusakambangan prison island to await execution by firing squad. Their transfer was quite a performance. They were driven to the airport in an armoured personnel carrier with another armoured vehicle following. Two busloads of riot police with water cannon were on standby. The airport perimeter was guarded by police with automatic rifles until the chartered plane departed, escorted by four fighter jets. It landed at a town in Java where a convoy of military and police vehicles with sirens blaring took the prisoners to a ferry for the short crossing to the death island.

It was as clear an answer to Australia as the Indonesian Government could give. Lawyers are still pursing final avenues of appeal but it is clear that Indonesia's popular new President, Joko Widodo, has been unmoved by Mr Abbott's pleadings. The spectacle staged for the prisoners' transfer suggests Mr Abbott has gone too far.

It is one thing for a nation to lecture its neighbour on the morality of capital punishment, quite another thing to suggest Indonesia owes Australian a favour for tsunami aid, or to make veiled threats that their relationship will suffer if Australians pay the known price for their crime in Indonesia.

President Widodo was democratically elected on a platform to fight corruption and promote the rule of law. He represents a sovereign country that expects to be treated as one. He cannot bend to external pressure. Mr Abbott must be more careful.