Independent but corrupt court

Independent but corrupt court

What do Manulife, the parents of four dead Trisakti University
students, hundreds of thousands of East Timorese and hundreds of
thousands of Acehnese have in common? They have all been fighting
to obtain justice from the Indonesian judiciary.

Are they ever going to get it? No, or rather, it depends.

Our judiciary has become more and more unpredictable of late
so that there is simply no way of telling whether, or when, if
ever, you will find justice if you feel you have been wronged,
either by the government, the military, by your business partners
or by anyone else for that matter.

The wheels of justice can, however, be set turning in the
right direction if you have money. Tons of money. The rupiah, the
U.S. dollar or payments in kind are the chief currencies used in
our courts. You can present the strongest imaginable evidence at
the hearing and still lose the court case. Our courts are looking
more and more like auction houses with judgments being knocked
down to the highest bidders, and not to those with right on their
side.

This is the bitter reality of our court system today, a
reality that has been confirmed again on two separate occasions
this week. First, Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) published a
detailed study about how corruption within the legal system has
become systemic and well-organized. Second, United Nations
special rapporteur Dato Param Cumaraswamy, who came to look at
the independence of the Indonesian judiciary, said he had found
that corruption was much worse than he had first thought.

So flagrant has corruption become that ICW chief coordinator
Teten Masduki has suggested that our judges might as well publish
their rates, or display them on their doors, so that justice
seekers know how much they will have to fork out to secure a
favorable judgment. Such transparency would at least provide a
greater degree of certainty for potential litigants.

The ICW report says that a justice seeker has to bribe his way
from the moment he makes his first move, say, from filing his
complaint either with the police or the court. And payments are
made at almost every stage of the legal process, all the way up
to the Supreme Court, if his case ever reaches that high. Even
then, there is no certainty that he will get justice because his
opponent could simply outbid him.

The Supreme Court, the last bastion of justice, has not only
failed to eradicate corruption, it is very much a part of this
game. This, sadly, is the tragic part of the story. The Court's
deep involvement means there is virtually no end in sight to this
problem.

The judiciary, unlike the executive and legislative branches
of government, cannot be held publicly accountable. The Supreme
Court can discipline judges of the lower courts, but no body
exists to supervise the justices. Once appointed, a member of the
Supreme Court serves until he reaches retirement age. He cannot
be removed by anyone, no matter how badly he behaves.

We cannot hold judges publicly accountable. We can only hold
them morally accountable, but like most politicians of the day,
the judges have become aloof, if not completely deaf, to public
opinion. Many of their rulings on high profile cases have hurt
the public sense of justice. But there is little we can do
because unlike politicians, judges do not have to subject
themselves to periodic elections.

The judiciary, among the three branches of government, has
been the least affected by reform. Shielded by the principle of
an independent judiciary, which the 1998 reform movement helped
enshrine, the Supreme Court has continued administering the law
the way it was done for 30 years under the Soeharto regime.

The Supreme Court is still run largely by people handpicked by
Soeharto, who treated the judiciary as another tool for
repressing the people. Back then, at least, they were answerable
to Soeharto. Today, they answer to no one but themselves. And
since most of the judges are still products of the repressive
regime, they remain as corrupt, if not more so, than before.

If democracy, the chief objective of reform, means a return to
the rule of law, the nation must first reform the institution
that administers the law. That means the judiciary, or more
precisely, the Supreme Court as the highest court of the land. So
far, the Supreme Court has been untouched by reform, and as a
result corruption has become even more rampant.

When will this end? What does it take to stop the rot?

There are many dangerous signs that the people are losing
their confidence in the judiciary's ability to deliver justice.
Many people have taken the law into their own hands. More
discontented people in Aceh and Papua have joined armed
insurgencies. Meanwhile, foreign investors are voting with their
feet, with many turning to international arbitration to settle
business disputes.

How much worse can it get?