Anticipating UN mission

Anticipating UN mission

Judging from the ample news coverage in the newspapers on the
oncoming visit of the UN fact-finding mission, under Special
Rapporteur Dato Param Cumaraswamy, reportedly to assess
Indonesia's legal system, while focussing on the independence of
judges and law practitioners in particular.

As the pertinent practices in question affecting the
judiciary, under the prevailing circumstances, knowingly involve
the Commenrcial Court, the State Administrative Court and the
Indonesian Human Rights Tribunal, only the tree courts were
expressly cited in the commentaries. Actually, in terms of the
overall framework of administration of justice, the Civil Court
and the Criminal Court should be attended to also.

Amid the commentaries was one expressed by an authoritative
source of the judiciary (The Jakarta Post of July 5) who
suggested that the current judicial system should be assessed as
compared with the system's condition of the country some years
before, and not with the legal system of a developed country. It
sounds rather odd that such a naive opinion should be expressed.

It must be argued that the Special Rapporteur in the person of
a UN official who hails from a country whose modern legal system
should belong to that of commonlaw, and not to the traditions and
standards of the continental (civil law) system, should, by way
of standard reference in making an evaluation, resort to the
pertient system as may be appropriate, par excellence, for
comparative purposes. This cannot be otherwise.

But what is essential for the Indonesian leadership engaged in
the legal profession to recognize is the fact that the UNmission
stays here for only ten days (from July 15 to July 25).It will be
unrealistic to expect too many things from whateever
recommendations coming from the mission as many entail from the
study, interviews and observations during just ten days in
Indonesia.

This means to say that in the search for solution in the
current judicial system -- which derives from the Dutch system
of the colonial times -- an accross-the-board reorientaion should
be necessary to learn from the other developed law systems,
including the judiciary, as well.

In the effort to make improvement and innovation in the
current (judicial) system, refernece to and understanding of
other relevant systems must be necessary.

S. SUHAEDI

Jakarta