Justice warns about unsolved, 'frozen' cases
Justice warns about unsolved, 'frozen' cases
JAKARTA (JP): Senior justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto warned
yesterday that people could take the law onto their own hands out
of desperation because the courts had failed to solve their
cases.
"If people failed to find justice in court, they might be
tempted to 'settle' things out of court," Adi, Deputy Chief
Justice for General Crimes at the Supreme Court, was quoted by
Antara as saying.
Speaking after a legal workshop at the Pontianak-based
Tanjungpura University in West Kalimantan, Adi, known for blowing
the whistle on alleged corruption in the Supreme Court, admitted
that judges encountered difficulties preventing, or allowing,
cases to be "frozen" for various reasons.
He did not elaborate on factors that led to cases being
frozen, but said he had experienced many times the frustration of
seeing the cases he was handling being halted midway.
He did not give examples. Many people, however, could name
cases where the law enforcers suddenly dropped the charges
without explanation.
Separately, in Semarang, legal expert Satjipto Rahardjo said
Indonesia's record on law enforcement in 1996 was not
satisfactory.
"We have to admit that our judiciary is complicated. Some
people even say that how our laws work is cause for desperation,"
Satjipto, a law professor at the Semarang-based Diponegoro
University.
He cited Justice Adi's struggle to bring to light what he
called rampant collusion in the Supreme Court.
"So strong were Adi's efforts to disclose the alleged
collusion, that former chief justice Soerjono proposed to
President Soeharto he be dismissed from his post as Deputy Chief
Justice for General Crimes," he said.
Another example was the October reversal by Soerjono of Adi's
ruling exonerating labor activist Muchtar Pakpahan of charges of
inciting labor unrest in Medan, North Sumatra, in 1994.
"It is an example of how poor our legal system's performance
is," said Satjipto, also a member of the National Commission on
Human Rights.
"We can't help but think Soerjono's ruling reflected personal
animosity toward Adi," he added.
Satjipto said he was not only concerned about the country's
poor legal record, but also about the difficulties the country
faced recruiting good and independent justices. He named former
justices Zainal Asikin Kusumah Atmadja, Wirjono and Bismar
Siregar, as well as Adi Andojo, as good justices.
Constitutional law expert Soehardjo, also from Diponegoro
University, seconded Satjipto.
"I wish to challenge the Supreme Court, called this country's
last bastion of justice, to live up to its name. We know already
how many cases are left unprocessed at the Supreme Court," he
said.
The Supreme Court has a backlog of more than 20,000
unprocessed cases.
Soehardjo called on the government and the House of
Representatives to review the Law No. 14/1970 on Judicial Power,
in order to improve the performance of Indonesian courts.
(har/imn)