Habibie fails to uphold supremacy of law: Experts

JAKARTA (JP): The government has failed to uphold the supremacy of law as an integral part of the reform movement, law practitioners said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a seminar, lawyers Bambang Widjojanto of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) and Frans Hendra Winarta, stressed that the government missed the message of the urgent need to reform the culture of law enforcers. Instead, new legal instruments were produced under the government's agenda of legal supremacy.

"In translating the supremacy of law during the one and half years under President B.J. Habibie, he has already submitted 38 bills on various subjects to the House of Representatives (DPR), some of which have been passed," Bambang said.

"That's what Habibie often refers to as upholding the law," he added.

However, if the content of the bills were viewed, he said, they would be far from serving the need to protect the public or guarantee human rights. Bambang cited the state security bill scheduled to be passed on Thursday.

On the contrary, the bills were merely produced for "impulsive" reasons just for the sake of making laws, Bambang said.

"So Pak Muladi is hired by Habibie to draw up any kind of bill," Bambang said, referring to Minister of Justice/State Secretary Muladi.

Such legal reform "only polishes the very surface of law and law enforcement," he said.

He joked that Habibie should be given a mention in the Guinness Book of Records for the many bills proposed to the House during his term in office.

Meanwhile, noted lawyer Frans Hendra Winarta said stagnant law enforcement dates back to the period under first president Sukarno.

Frans alleged that verdicts made by judges here were mostly biased with political interest shown to the government.

"Judges should not be civil servants," he said. "They have to be independent and should be only placed under the judicial institution," he said. Judges work under the Ministry of Justice.

Monitoring judicial practices in the 1960 and 1970 rules clearly show government intervention, he said.

He also added that there were obscure job descriptions among law enforcers which led to the weakened institutions.

"In a law enforcement scheme, the police must find guilt based on facts, while the prosecutor's office probes guilt based on legal technicalities. But here the job description among the two prominent law enforcers overlap," Frans said.

He said legal reform would depend on political will from the government.

Bambang added, "Presently, we cannot just wait for political will, we have to grab it or create it." (emf)