Gus Dur's lawyer pans Court's legal opinion

Gus Dur's lawyer pans Court's legal opinion

JAKARTA (JP): A lawyer of President Abdurrahman Wahid
expressed his regret over the Supreme Court's refusal to give a
legal opinion on the legality of a special session of the
People's Consultative Assembly.

Lawyer Luhut MP Pangaribuan regretted that the Supreme Court
had failed to act as mediator in settling the dispute between the
government and the House of Representatives, which on Wednesday
called for the Assembly to hold a special session to ask the
President to account for his administration's performance.

"By refusing to give a legal opinion, the Supreme Court has
shown that it has no power to do anything," Luhut told The
Jakarta Post by telephone.

Luhut hinted that he would file a response over the Supreme
Court decision, but he declined to reveal it, since the court had
not yet officially submitted its conclusion to the President.

The government had asked the court to issue a decision on the
validity of the House' censure motion that was based on the
President's alleged involvement in two financial scandals.

Supreme Court Chief Bagir Manan stated that a team of supreme
justices had completed a study on it. However, he denied to
disclose their conclusions before they had been submitted
directly to the President.

Bagir also said, "President Abdurrahman Wahid has asked for it
to be confidential."

A source close to the court, however, said that the court had
refused to give any legal opinion, arguing that the most
appropriate institution to give an opinion on political disputes
was the Assembly, not the Supreme Court.

"I agree that such a political dispute should be settled by
the Assembly," Luhut said.

"But our request to the court is not to ask them to settle the
dispute. We were just asking the court to give its legal opinion
over the differences of interpretation on the special session
between the government and the House."

"I guess we were addressing the most appropriate institution
when we asked the Supreme Court to do this," Luhut said.

Separately, political observer of the University of Indonesia
Eep Syaifullah Fatah said the current political dispute between
the House and the government again showed that the country lacked
appropriate legal institutions.

"As we can see, even the Supreme Court cannot act as mediator
to bridge the dispute between the two state institutions over
their differences of interpretation on the constitution," Eep
told reporters, after meeting Coordinating Minister for
Political, Social and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"If we don't want such a thing to happen again, I guess we
will have to form a kind of Supreme Court on the Constitution,"
Eep said. (02)