Lawlessness thwarts civil society

Abu Hanifah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Don't even think about having a strong civil society in Indonesia as long as law enforcement remains slack and lawlessness is the order of the day, a political observer says.

Mochtar Pabottingi of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) argued that Indonesia should reform its judicial system and improve law enforcement to nurture a strong civil society.

Building a civil society requires good governance, which is equally impossible without effective law enforcement and judicial institutions.

Pabottingi made the remarks during a seminar in Jakarta on Wednesday on developing civil society, a resilient society which did not depend on the state.

On legal uncertainty, he referred to the Supreme Court's recent controversial acquittal of Tommy Soeharto from an 18-month prison sentence as a case in point.

"Releasing Tommy Soeharto is an act damaging to the judicial image of Indonesia. He was convicted in the (South Jakarta) district court. Then he filed clemency to the president, meaning he implicitly acknowledged he was guilty. Rejected.

"He filed a case review with the Supreme Court. And he won. This is ridiculous. The justices who handed the verdict down have to be investigated," he said.

Mochtar said the Supreme Court had set a dangerous precedent in law enforcement. That was bad for the development of civil society, he added.

In response to public pressure for an investigation into the controversial ruling, the Supreme Court has promised to make public the panel of judges' legal arguments.

Mochtar said that the government should have the courage to sack corrupt judges as part of a campaign to reform the judicial system.

"Law enforcement should get top priority," Mochtar said.

Another speaker at the seminar, Sanyoto Usman, a political expert from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, also underlined the need to improve law enforcement.

He said that public trust in the judicial system was so low that people tended to take the law into their own hands. People will lynch or even set criminals ablaze rather than surrender them to the police, he said.

Sanyoto supported the idea of dismissing corrupt judges as a move to improve the judicial system.