Gus Dur misses on key economic post

Gus Dur misses on key economic post

President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid announced the lineup of
new Cabinet on Wednesday. Charles Himawan, a member of the
National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and professor of
law at the University of Indonesia, regrets that a junior
minister of justice and human rights for economic affairs was not
appointed.

JAKARTA (JP): The government should realize by now that one of
its major failures over the past 10 months in rebounding
Indonesia's economy is due to the inability of many government
legal officers to grasp the important and determining link
between implementation of the law and economic activities.

In the just-completed Cabinet reshuffle, it is regrettable
that Gus Dur did not take the golden opportunity of installing a
junior minister of justice and human rights for economic affairs
who would focus his/her work on economic activities. This would
have brought fresh hope and opportunity to businessmen who wish
to participate in rehabilitating Indonesia's economy.

A junior minister of justice and human rights for economic
affairs would have covered the following tasks:

* Preparing an amendment of one or two articles on the
existing written regulations regarding the power of judges and
prosecutors. The idea behind this amendment is to make it
possible for the government to appoint noncareer judges and
prosecutors to adjudicate cases that are directly and indirectly
related to economic activities.

Cases that are directly connected to economic activities are,
for example, the Bank Bali case, several bank cases that relate
to misappropriation of people's deposits and state credit and
property confiscation, whether through bankruptcy procedure or
though ordinary civil law procedure. Most important of all are
the bad debt cases in the hands of the Indonesian Bank
Restructuring Agency (IBRA).

Cases that are not directly connected to economic activities
but have a great economic implications include those that are
tainted with collusion, corruption and nepotism. These are, for
example, the cases of former president Soeharto and the State
Logistics Agency (Bulog). Also included in this category are the
many social disturbances that are now widespread. People who
apprehend a suspected burglar and club him to death and street
fighting between groups of people would scare businessmen away if
those perpetrators were not punished according to the law.

* Preparing an amendment on the existing written regulation
that will make it possible (starting from this month) to
adjudicate cases that are directly and indirectly related to
economic activities with three judges: One career judge and two
ad hoc (noncareer) judges. There are still many clean career
judges out there, and we still need them to preside over the
adjudication process because of their experience and technical
knowledge in presiding over cases.

* Preparing an amendment on the existing written regulation
that makes it possible for a district court to hand down a
decision by a majority vote among the three judges. However, the
presiding judge does not have a determining vote or a kind of
veto. The value of his vote is similar to that of the other two
judges. And most importantly, it should be made possible for the
minority judge to write down his dissenting opinion.

* Preparing the necessary amendment on the existing written
regulation covering a similar possibility for ad hoc judges for
the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The is important to
ensure that the decision of the District Court remains reliable.
If the judiciary is reliable and if in the future the case
against former president Soeharto is dismissed, perhaps people
would readily accept it on the grounds that all possible reliable
legal means had been exhausted (common international law jargon).

* Determining that the Jakarta District Court will be made a
kind of pilot project in order to monitor the strength and
weakness of the above suggested drastic changes before this
judiciary restructuring could be carried out throughout the
nation.

* Acting as a liaison between the government and the business
world so that the bitter experience of the businessmen in terms
of law implementation could be accommodated and necessary action
could be effected to rectify the grievances.

Since the work of this proposed junior minister of justice and
human rights for economic affairs would be so encompassing, it
would be impossible to "downgrade" the work to a level of a
director general, as some have suggested. The work of this junior
minister would cover not only economic activities per se, but it
also envelope ordinary civil action, criminal acts and, as we can
see from the above, amending written regulations. Perhaps the
work would even cover the constitutional law threshold, for
example, preparing the implementation of regulations of Article
33 of Indonesia's Constitution of 1945 regarding economic
activities that these written rules may become business-friendly.

Those are the work plans of the proposed junior minister of
justice and human rights for economic affairs for the coming
year. If all these could be effected, a flicker of hope for a
rebound in Indonesia's economy could be felt within the coming
year or two. This plan of work for the medium- and long-term
would naturally be different and require further and deeper
thought. For example, amending the written regulations on the
Supreme Court, so that in future the number of Supreme Court
justices would be limited to about nine or 15, would take at
least 10 years. A similar timeframe might also be needed if we
want to limit the kind of cases that could be brought before the
Supreme Court. This is contrary to the present practice that
allows every case to be brought before the Supreme Court.