Prosecutions indicted over poor showing
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"Huuuu...! That's what you get when you skip classes all the time," spectators at the Anticorruption Court in Jakarta once mocked a prosecutor who was warned by the presiding judge to deliver clear and intelligent questions to the defendant, Abdullah Puteh, who has been suspended as Aceh governor while being tried for graft.
About five kilometers away, a 25-year-old man sat in a corner of a West Jakarta courthouse holding a cell phone. He had figured out how to obtain Rp 4 million (about US$430) in a week to meet the prosecutor's demand so that the sentence demand for his bother, on trial on drug charges, could be reduced from the expected four years.
Both cases illustrate the poor quality of state prosecutors and rampant bribery among them, which drew the attention of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) when assessing the performance of Indonesian law enforcement agencies.
"Like the police and courts, this prestigious (prosecutor's) institution is widely criticized for failing to bring about justice. The poor quality of prosecution was shown in highly publicized cases, such as those related to human rights abuses in East Timor as well as in corruption cases against high-ranking officials," said the ADB report titled Government Assessment Report-Indonesia.
It said no specific measure existed for evaluating the performance of prosecutors, including those in management positions.
"The skills required for management positions are not defined, so candidates are not necessarily selected on the basis of their skills or the needs of the organization," the 125-page report states.
However, the ADB also noticed that reforms undertaken by the institution were centralized and top-down in nature. Some key aspects of reform were beyond the institution's jurisdiction, such as the requirement of the Office of the State Minister of Administrative Reforms to restructure the organization.
The report also stresses that the institutional reform of the public prosecution services depend merely on the political will and leadership of the president and coordination between several ministers and the House of Representatives, which causes it to owe allegiance to the state.
An unnamed source at the Attorney General's Office confirmed that rapid changes in the institution's leadership partly contributed to the slow pace of reform.
"We have had six bosses in six years. What kind of reform can be done under such circumstances? Worst still, I once had four bosses in a week! That happened during Habibie's presidency. Monday it was Ghalib; Tuesday Faisal Tanjung; Wednesday Muladi, and Friday it was Ismudjoko. Each assumed office for just one day before they were replaced by the president. I bet not even one neighborhood (RT) head has experienced such a thing," said the source.
The poor quality of prosecutors is made worse by the minimum budget the office receives from the state. This has led the institution to look for revenue outside of the budget, which according to a source came from traffic tickets, court fines and other court-related revenue.
"Relying on off-budget revenues has far-reaching consequences for the organization. First, it institutionalizes corruption, undermining the very purpose of the prosecution services in promoting law and justice ... Second, performance cannot be accurately reviewed if major parts of financing are unknown," the report said. (006)