RI's legal system not independent: Megawati's lawyers
JAKARTA (JP): A team of lawyers who have been waging a losing battle for Megawati Soekarnoputri, the toppled leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), accused the Indonesian judicial system as being a mere extension of the government.
The Public Defenders for Indonesian Democracy (TPDI), led by R.O. Tambunan, said at a press conference here yesterday that the Indonesian court system was neither independent nor impartial.
He cited how politically related trials invariably concluded with the courts ruling in favor of the government.
"(Indonesian) judges are neither independent nor free from the government's influence, so their judgments cannot be considered as fair decisions," Tambunan said.
The team expressed concern that public confidence in the legal system had declined to a dangerously low level, citing that the situation could force people to seek their own justice and take the law into their own hands.
Tambunan said that 95 percent of the 65 lawsuits that the team filed for Megawati and her supporters had been rejected in courts across the country.
Most district courts argued in their rejections that they did not have the authority to hear the lawsuits, or that the issues involved an internal dispute to be settled by the split party itself.
Megawati, the eldest daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, has sued the government and the military over a PDI rebel congress in the North Sumatra capital of Medan in June last year which dismissed her from the party leadership. The congress elected Soerjadi as the new PDI chairman.
She named Soerjadi and the congress' organizers, Minister of Home Affairs Yogie S.M., Armed Forces Chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung and National Police Chief Gen. Dibyo Widodo, as defendants.
Supporters from various PDI branches filed similar lawsuits across the country.
Legislature
Separately, the Center for Information and Development Studies, a think-tank affiliated with the Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI), said yesterday that the country had not made any progress in strengthening the national legislature this year.
The center's legal expert, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, said in a year-end press conference that none of the 32 bills passed by the House of Representatives over the year, were initiated by the legislative body itself.
Yusril said the House had over the past five years introduced only two bills -- one on the Mataram mayoralty and another on the 1993 state budget. He also said the legislation produced in the House tended to uphold the status quo rather than accommodate public aspirations.
"The legislative program (to strengthen the legislature) in 1997 didn't work," said Yusril, who is also a lecturer at the University of Indonesia's law school.
He called for a dialog among experts and intellectuals to decide which legislative efforts were of the highest priority.
"It (cooperation) is needed to help (the House and the government) come up with legislation that is really needed by the people, instead of legislation which opens doors for officials to commit corruption," he said.
He accused the government of submitting only bills that were inconsequential, and failing to submit important ones. He cited a bill to amend the country's Criminal Code Procedures, which had been ready since 1993, had yet to be submitted by the government to the House.
He also cited a much-needed bill to amend the existing anti- corruption law.
On the other hand, he said, a bill on courts for juvenile legal offenders, which "was not urgent", was sent to the House to be deliberated. The bill was passed in 1996, but had yet to be endorsed by President Soeharto following a fierce debate from the country's Moslem community.
"In this case, we need transparency (from the government) to explain why the much-needed bills are not made a priority and how the House members as public representatives respond to it," he said. "We can't let this situation continue." (10/aan)