Jakarta. A board meeting of Indonesia’s Golkar Party late on Tuesday night (21/11) decided the party should wait for the result of a pretrial lawsuit being launched by its current chairman and graft suspect Setya Novanto before selecting a new leader, a party official told the Jakarta Globe.

Nurul Arifin, Golkar’s media relations head, said senior party leader Nurdin Halid had read out the decision during the meeting, which was held to decide on Setya's political fate after Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigators put him under detention on Sunday night after he caused a media furore by evading arrest last week.

The party agreed to appoint secretary-general Idrus Marham as acting chairman until a verdict is reached in the pretrial suit.

"If Setya loses the [pretrial] suit, we will ask him to resign," Nurdin said.

The KPK alleges the senior politician and House of Representatives speaker had siphoned off Rp 574 billion ($42 million) from the Rp 5.9-trillion national electronic identity card (e-KTP) procurement project.

The state reportedly lost a total of Rp 2.3 trillion from the failed project.

Setya could face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty, but has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Two letters believed to have been written by Setya himself made the rounds among reporters on Tuesday evening.

One of the letters is addressed to the House of Representatives and the other to the Golkar Party.

Setya asked the House to give him time to prove his innocence in the e-KTP graft case before stripping him of his power as speaker.

In his letter to Golkar, Setya urged the party to appoint Idrus as his caretaker.

KPK investigators picked up Setya from a hospital in Central Jakarta, where he was hospitalized after crashing his car into a power pole on Thursday, and sent him straight to the antigraft agency's detention center in South Jakarta.