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.