Seeking true justices

Seeking true justices

The House of Representatives will soon screen and interview 63 Supreme Court Justice candidates. It will be the second time that the House has helped choose new justices during the reform era. The first was in 2000.

The interview process is meant to select 26 new justices, from the available pool. A shortage of justices has affected the performance of the Supreme Court. The chairman of The Association of Indonesian Judges Toton Soeprapto has once said that there were 16,000 cases backlogged at the Supreme Court. The sluggishness of settling the cases has greatly affected those who are waiting for the settlement of their legal proceedings.

In this context, the presence of new justices will be very relevant. But the bottom line is not just seeking new justices to fill the vacant posts, but more than that - seeking qualified justices, with their own specialties. Or quality over quantity.

The question is: Do the members in the House have the ability, integrity and wisdom to decide on the best judges?

-- Suara Karya, Jakarta