IN INDONESIA, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, many politicians hold open houses on the first morning of the post-Ramadan Idul Fitri holiday to greet supporters and well wishers, before spending the afternoon with their own families. Last week, lawmaker Muhammad Nazaruddin proved to be an exception, spending August 31st in police detention facility just outside the capital Jakarta on corruption charges while his wife, also a suspect, remained on the run abroad with the couple's children. Mr Nazaruddin, who is now the most celebrated detainee in a country bursting with high-profile corruption suspects, marked his 33rd birthday in jail on August 26th.

Only four months ago, the wealthy, handsome businessman-cum-politician was a high-flying member of parliament. It all came crashing down in early May after Mr Nazaruddin was implicated in a scandal involving the construction of athletes' dormitories for the upcoming Southeast Asia Games, which Indonesia is hosting. National and provincial government officials, an executive from a company run by Mr Nazaruddin that won the construction tender, as well as a fellow lawmaker from the Democratic Party, have also been arrested or implicated. On May 23rd, a humbled Mr Nazaruddin boarded a flight to Singapore and went on the run before Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) could request a travel ban. He was finally arrested in the Columbian resort town of Cartagena on August 8th and flown home.

Mr Nazaruddin's spectacular fall from grace has spotlighted the fact that, despite being 13 years removed from the fall of Indonesian dictator Suharto's corrupt regime in 1998, opportunistic government officials, lawmakers and businessmen continue to collude on the awarding of state contracts, budget funds, big business deals, and even tax breaks in exchange for a piece of the action. This is an embarrassment for the world's third-largest democracy and a leading emerging economy.

While Mr Nazaruddin's arrest is another black eye for parliament, the scandal has also spread far and wide. Mr Nazaruddin was treasurer of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling Democratic Party, and before he was finally detained by Columbian immigration, he claimed from abroad that other senior Democratic Party figures were aware of the graft involving the dormitory project and had themselves profited by it. The Democrats have flatly denied his claims.

Mr Yudhoyono handily won presidential elections in 2004 and 2009 on a platform of zero tolerance for corruption, but Mr Nazaruddin has clearly hurt the Democratic Party's image and poll ratings. While he can't seek another term in office, the president will remain its chief patron after he steps down in 2014. Whether Mr Yudhoyono's successor is another Democratic Party leader remains to be seen, given that Mr Nazaruddin implicated two potential presidential candidates in the scandal. Then there's the future of the party itself, which was founded by Mr Yudhoyono ahead of the 2004 elections. Without his star power on the stump as a candidate, some believe the Democrats will crumble in parliamentary and presidential polls in 2014.

For the most part, the Democratic Party's political rivals stood back and watched it squirm. But after Mr Nazaruddin was brought home and placed in detention, a group of lawmakers from rival and opposition parties curiously visited him in jail, after which Mr Nazaruddin claimed he had “forgotten everything” about the dormitory scandal.

It is just possible that Mr Nazaruddin will strike a deal with the KPK and tell all about the massive web of corruption that remains a fixture in parliament. In recent months, for example, 28 current and former lawmakers were sentenced to prison for accepting bribes to vote for a candidate for deputy central bank governor in 2003, before the Democratic Party was even in parliament. If Mr Yudhoyono's rivals want to play hardball with him over the Nazaruddin scandal, they should pause to consider that they have far more skeletons in their own closets.