Lack of justices blamed for judicial corruption

Lack of justices blamed for judicial corruption

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Corruption and backlog cases remain major problems at the Supreme
Court, despite efforts to solve them, Chief Justice Bagir Manan
told the country's legislators on Friday.

The Supreme Court chief admitted that they had failed to
eradicate judicial corruption, but was quick to add that the
failure was due to a lack of justices, funds and facilities.

Bagir told legislators at the Annual Session of the People's
Consultative Assembly that the Supreme Court had tasked its
monitoring division to establish a judiciary that was free of
corruption, collusion and nepotism by optimizing its monitoring
functions.

"As a result (of the monitoring), the court has proposed
punitive actions against 11 judges," he said, pointing to the
Supreme Court's achievement in its anticorruption drive this
year.

In addition, the court's secretary-general had taken punitive
measures against five Supreme Court employees for misconduct, he
added.

"By last month, the Supreme Court had received 397 reports on
alleged misconduct by its employees and judges," he said.

The monitoring division, which was set up last year, handles
reports on corrupt, collusive and nepotistic practices allegedly
involving the court's employees and judges.

Even so, few of the misconduct cases have been brought to
trial.

Earlier this year, the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW)
reported on the widespread corruption in the country's judicial
system, which involved a wide range of players -- from Supreme
Court justices to parking attendants of a district court.

The watchdog even labeled the judiciary as "the true winner in
the corruption race in the country".

In a sensational bribery case last year, a middleman involved
in the affair was convicted, while the two Supreme Court justices
linked to the bribery were acquitted from all charges.

During his presentation, Bagir complained that the court did
not have enough justices, despite the installment of 18
additional justices in June. He said that the 43 judges currently
sitting on the court were not sufficient to handle the backlog of
16,581 cases.

The number of backlog cases this year is higher than last
year's 15,570 cases. The Supreme Court receives some 5,000 new
cases every year.

"There will be four justices who are going into retirement
this year," he said.

Ideally, the Supreme Court should have 51 justices.

Bagir expected the judges to process some 10,000 backlog cases
this year.

He urged lawmakers to issue regulations to help limit the
cases that could be brought to the Supreme Court to prevent more
cases from piling up.

In the meantime, Bagir said, the Supreme Court had tried to
settle the problem by other means, including supporting out-of-
court settlements.

The chief justice also complained about the lack of funds and
facilities that had hampered the Court in its efforts to improve
its performance.

The government has disbursed Rp 116 billion for the Supreme
Court in this year's budget, which is double the budget allotted
in 2002.

"The amount is not sufficient, although it has helped the
Supreme Court to improve its performance," Bagir told
legislators.