RI judiciary remains unable to uphold justice, NGO says

RI judiciary remains unable to uphold justice, NGO says

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The country's judicial institutions have failed to uphold justice
for all, as many verdicts have been delivered without proper
legal arguments and charges have been leveled at suspects without
sufficient evidence, a judiciary watchdog has said.

"We found many cases in which verdicts were made on the basis
of very weak legal arguments," coordinator of the Society of
Indonesian Judiciary Monitors (Mappi) Asep Rahmat Fajar told a
media conference over the weekend.

Mappi, which was founded by the University of Indonesia's
school of law, held the conference to disclose its review of the
performance of judicial institutions in 2003. The report was
issued based on on-the-spot monitoring in district courts in
Greater Jakarta and Cibinong, West Java, which, it claimed, could
represent the general state of the judiciary in the country.

The watchdog's annual report said judges blamed prosecutors'
lack of evidence for their decisions to exonerate defendants,
which had occurred many times in corruption cases.

"Evidence is one of the most important things necessary to
support legal arguments," the report said.

Mappi said Indonesian judges often delivered weak sentences in
criminal cases due to the absence of guidelines, and ignored
minimum sentences when it came to human rights trials.

The human rights tribunal acquitted 11 defendants in the 1999
East Timor mayhem and sentenced the remaining four to between
three years and 15 years in jail. The convicts remain free,
pending appeal.

"The court has obviously violated Law No. 26/2000 on human
rights tribunals, which sets the minimum sentence at 10 years in
jail," Asep said.

Mappi also highlighted the disparity in sentences handed to
convicts in drug abuse, dealing or smuggling cases.

Data collected by Mappi in courts in Central, South, East,
West and North Jakarta and in Cibinong revealed that the judges
had no clear arguments to support the disparity in sentences.

Among hundreds of drug-related cases, Mappi recorded that
district courts in Jakarta sentenced defendants to between four
months and 11 months in jail for violating article 78 of Law No.
22/1997 on drugs and narcotics, which is punishable by a maximum
10 years in jail and a Rp 500 million fine.

The courts also jailed defendants for four years to 20 years
for violating article 82 of the law, which sets the minimum jail
sentence at 20 years and the fine at Rp 1 billion.

"This revealed that the courts tended to deliver lenient
sentence for an offense punishable by 10 years in jail," Asep
said.

The disparity, he said, was a result of the absence of Supreme
Court guidelines for courts on issuing verdicts.

"This situation may result in a decline of public trust in law
enforcement, which has been indicated by the growing number of
people who take the law into their own hands, including by
attacking the courts," Asep warned.

Mappi also criticized judges for their failure to adhere to
their code of professional conduct.

A monitor with Mappi disclosed that several judges fell asleep
during trials, were absent during hearings or opted to speed up
trials in criminal cases that were punishable by custodial
sentences of five years or more.