Govt acts to revive trust in legal system

Govt acts to revive trust in legal system

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A joint government team has drawn up an action plan to revive
public confidence in a legal system beset by endemic corruption,
but experts have dismissed the plan as lacking the teeth to
enforce sweeping reforms.

The team, working under the auspices of the Office of the
Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, has
drawn up a plan to reform the country's laws, judiciary, Attorney
General's Office and National Police. A separate plan is aimed at
fighting corruption.

"It's a short-term action plan covering programs that run
until 2004," said the team's chairwoman, Leila Ratna Komala,
during a discussion with legal experts on Thursday night.

Five government institutions worked on the plan, with funding
from the Partnership for Governance Reform -- a body that manages
funds from creditor countries supporting government reform
programs.

The team was made up of representatives from the Supreme
Court, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the National
Police, the Office of the Coordinating Minister for Political and
Security Affairs and the National Development Planning Board
(Bappenas).

Leila, who is the deputy for security and political affairs at
Bappenas, said work on the plan began in January and was
scheduled to be completed this year.

"By September we hope to obtain the commitment of our legal
executives," she said, referring to the ministers or heads of
each institution represented on the team. "Toward 2004 we expect
public confidence to start to build."

The plan might be the most comprehensive legal reform program
the government has undertaken since the 1998 fall of Soeharto,
which was followed by an alarming decay of the country's
judiciary.

A visiting United Nations envoy last month called Indonesia's
judiciary one of the worst he had seen since taking up his role
as a UN rapporteur on judicial independence in 1994.

Public confidence in the legal system has diminished, a fact
that has been blamed for the rise of street justice and mob
killings over the past few years.

A rash of controversial verdicts against foreign investors has
added to the pressure from donor countries for judicial reform.

The draft plan covers five areas of reform, with each outlined
in terms of specific activities, targets, output, means of
implementation and monitoring mechanisms.

Among its recommendations for legislation reform, the team
proposed a list of laws, ranked according to priority, to provide
the necessary legal framework to improve the legal system.

On judicial reform, it proposed regulations to improve the
credibility of verdicts, paying judges higher salaries and
tightening the recruitment process for judges.

On reforming the police, the team urged improved education for
officers and increasing the number of recruits. It said reforms
in the Attorney General's Office required a steering committee to
improve the division of authority between the police and Attorney
General's Office.

In the battle against corruption -- seen as the biggest hurdle
in reforming the judiciary -- the team suggested inventorying
unresolved corruption cases to recoup state losses.

But several legal experts who took part in the discussion with
the joint government team, said the plan was too weak. They
feared the absence of the political will from the concerned
institutions would render the plan ineffective.

Prominent corporate lawyer Kartini Mulyadi said the plan
reflected no sense of emergency. She also raised concern over
leaving the plan in the hands of the people responsible for the
current state of the legal system.

"We have here a patient who doesn't admit he is sick," she
said, referring to the institutions that made up the joint team.

Lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said the plan seemed to him to rely
too much on the bureaucracy for its implementation.

While Teten Masduki of the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW)
said the team made an incorrect assumptions in thinking the
country's judiciary could improve by itself.

Last month the ICW released a study of judicial corruption,
depicting a neat system of a corrupt legal system from the police
and prosecutors to judges.

"We need something pragmatic, something short term. This
program isn't workable," Teten said.

Criminologist Adrianus Meliala, who is an adviser to the
Partnership for Governance Reform, however, said the program went
a long way toward getting the five institutions sit together and
think about a comprehensive solution.

"It's their program. There is a sense of belonging which we
hope will make it work," he said.