JAKARTA: In an attempt to reduce the massive backlog of

JAKARTA: In an attempt to reduce the massive backlog of
appeals waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court, a legal
practitioner suggested on Friday that restrictions be placed on
the type of cases the could be brought before the highest court
in the land.

"The Supreme Court since the beginning could have limited the
number of incoming appeal cases depending on their substance,"
lawyer Bambang Widjajanto said while commenting on the backlog of
16,000 appeals waiting to be heard by the country's highest
court.

He said that only a small percentage (between 10 percent and
20 percent) of appeal cases raised questions of law, with the
vast majority (between 80 percent and 90 percent) only being
concerned with questions of fact.

"It's not against the legislation to restrict appeals to the
Supreme Court solely to those concerned with questions of law,"
he said.

Bambang suggested that the Supreme Court's workload could be
reduced by only allowing criminal appeals in the case of
convictions where sentences of five-years imprisonment or more
had been imposed.

Another measure would be to establish "a special task force"
to vet the cases that were currently in the pipeline.

Chief Justice Bagir Manan told a plenary meeting of the
People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Annual Session on Thursday
that despite the high productivity of the justices, there were
still some 16,000 cases awaiting the attention of the Supreme
Court.--Antara