Our court's image
The Supreme Court finally announced the result of its own investigation into allegations of collusion among its members. That the probe over the way the court heard the case of Gandhi Seva Loka vs Ram Gulumal alias V. Ram generated a lot of anticipation and expectation among the public is understandable. There has been growing concern that corruption has even touched the country's highest court. The increasing popularity of the phrase "court mafia" and charges that justice may be bought are just some of the factors that have not only dented the court's image, but also eroded confidence in the legal system. When the Supreme Court decided to open the investigation in April, many people considered it the ideal opportunity for the court to come clean. It would also pave the way for the rest of the legal system, down to the lowest courts, to clean house.
Reality however does not always meet expectation. The investigation, as announced by Chief Justice Soerjono on Monday, found no evidence of the alleged collusion among the court's justices. It found no impropriety in the way that the case was parceled out to a certain justice deemed favorable to the defendant, or in the way that the panel of judges decided to reverse the guilty verdicts meted out by lower courts against the defendant. The investigating team found no conclusive evidence to support the allegation that collusion was involved. With regard to the charge that the defendant had offered or given Rp 1.4 billion to fix the verdict in his favor, the team said none of the 34 people it interviewed could corroborate the suggestion that money changed hands during the process of the hearing.
After all the suspense that the investigation created, helped by the barrage of media reports over the last few weeks, to some people Monday's announcement was an anticlimax. The result was inconclusive. The investigation could not prove the alleged collusion, but it did not exactly refute that it took place.
Many people predicted that something like this would happen. One reason is that it was an internal investigation commissioned by Chief Justice Soerjono; it was not an independent investigation which would have been more objective and possibly more thorough. Another reason that should have lowered people's expectations was that corruption has always been difficult to prove, and collusion is almost impossible. The method of the investigation is questionable because it only asked people who may have been involved in the alleged collusion.
The investigators said they did not look at the court case in question because the matter had been settled and the defendant acquitted. They did not deem it necessary to question how the Supreme Court could reverse the earlier rulings of the lower courts, which is one possible reason to suspect collusion. Had they started their investigation by looking at the case, they may have come to a different conclusion. Combined with the unusual circumstances over the way the case was assigned to a certain justice, the investigation might have lead to a more definite conclusion, whichever way that might be.
We're not suggesting that there was ever any collusion, but there are weaknesses in the way which the investigation was conducted, making its result questionable. So what started as a great opportunity for the Supreme Court to improve its image has ended up with more skepticism, as can be seen from the reactions of many people in legal circles to Monday's announcement.
Still, we take our hats off to the Supreme Court for opening the investigation at all and to Justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto for drawing the public's attention to the case. At a time like this, any move to clean up the courts' image and restore the people's confidence in the legal system should be applauded. We hope that the effort does not stop with the end of this investigation.