Illusionist

Who does not know David Copperfield, who makes things seem to disappear, who makes us believe that he passed through the Great Wall of China, who shows us his body cut in half and can still move?

We know what we see is not the reality, but we accept and admire it. This is like the law in Indonesia. We see and hear what according to our senses cannot be real but it is there. I wish I was also a master like Copperfield, so that I could create things or make things disappear.

Although I have no law background, it saddens me to see how Indonesian law, the 1945 Constitution and regulations can be interpreted in so many ways. The law is considered to be good when it suits one person's ambition, wishes and interest. It is the same law, made by the same institutions, enforced by people who studied law, and yet the outcome is most of the time different.

If all judges are capable and act according to their vow, and consider and study everything connected with the case without any bias, then there should be no difference of opinion. Perhaps there is the matter of taste, so that the guilty sometimes gets a longer prison sentence than another for the same crime, but that is all.

The contradiction spills over to Indonesian Democratic Party. One group say the congress is constitutional, but the other group dismisses it as unconstitutional.

According to the Supreme Court there is no collusion in its ranks, but according to a senior judge corruption exists. A professor of law said the findings of the special team investigating the collusion case are good and make people happy. Yet another professor of law said the findings had many shortcomings.

It is understandable, then, that common people are confused. There must be a way out.

As an illusionist, I suggest abolishing the present judicial system and creating only a district court. The verdict of the district court would be final. People might laugh at this idea and brand me a madman, but as an illusionist this is one of my illusions.

Look at my illusion from a simple economic point of view. One verdict of the district court is sometimes 400 pages thick. Suppose there are 100,000 cases in one year, that means 40,000,000 pages. Added to this the paper used by the high court and the Supreme Court, then you can imagine how much money you can save just from the reduction of paper. A special team's findings run about 1500 pages.

We should place more faith in lower court judges. Their verdict should be considered final. Justice has been done because all evidence has been carefully considered, witnesses have been heard, the accused is assisted by his lawyers during the whole trial. What more do we want?

Some may argue that they are just human beings and can make mistakes. Okay, I accept that, but so are high court judges. To minimize the mistakes we have a panel of judges.

Does repetition guarantee fairness and better justice? Be realistic and see what we have after an appeal to the Supreme Court.

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