Legal reform going nowhere, commission tells President

Legal reform going nowhere, commission tells President

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Four years since the beginning of the reform era, legal reform is
still going nowhere because the government, the legislature and
the judiciary are reluctant to cooperate to guide reform, the
National Legal Commission (KHN) said.

Presenting this to President Megawati Soekarnoputri on
Thursday, the commission underlined the importance of drawing up
a blueprint for legal reform.

"There is no cooperation at all between the legislature,
executive and judiciary to promote reform," commission member
Harkristuti Harkrisnowo said.

The commission cited that the lack of coordination left open
an opportunity for the existence of too many contradictory
regulations, poor-quality legal apparatus and abuse of power in
most legal institutions.

Another commission member, Fajrul Falakh, said that the
continuing discord between state agencies had tainted the image
of Indonesia's legal system.

"In their steps against errant judges, for instance, all three
state branches of power seem to have different approaches and
they should be united," Fajrul said.

However, the commission refused to go into detail, saying that
it had conducted research into the matter, the results of which
would be made public in early October, after they had been
presented to the Cabinet.

Analysts have repeatedly stressed that legal reform is the
most important step to safeguard the reform movement in the
country, which started in mid-1998.

Only by ensuring a sense of justice would the public believe
in and support the government's attempts to curb corruption and
uphold respect for human rights.

However, after four years, corruption continues to plague
legal institutions, resulting in many controversial court
decisions, and this has greatly disappointed the public.

Many questionable court decisions, such as the acquittal of
central bank Governor Sjahril Sabirin in a multimillion-dollar
corruption case and controversial legal proceedings against House
of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung in another
multimillion-dollar graft case, have continued to taint the
reform movement in the legal sector.

In those cases, the government repeatedly said that the
verdict was the responsibility of the Supreme Court and the
government could therefore not interfere in those decisions.

"Bearing in mind these examples there needs to be a similarity
of view from all three state branches of power on how we are
going to proceed with legal reform," Fajrul said.