Supreme Court gets six younger justices

JAKARTA (JP): Chief Justice Soerjono yesterday installed six new justices to serve in the Supreme Court, replacing those who recently reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.

Soerjono disclosed yesterday that five other serving justices are due for retirement this year which means that the Supreme Court will shortly undergo a major rejuvenation process.

The Supreme Court, the highest appeals court, is served by 51 justices, including its chief. In their daily work to try appeals, they are divided into 17 teams of three justices each.

They are appointed by presidential decree.

Five of the six newly installed justices were formerly judges serving in the lower courts. They are Soeharto, formerly chief of the Jakarta high court; his deputy Anak Agung Ayu Mirah; Asma Samik Ibrahim, former chief of the Surabaya state administrative high court; Mariana Sutadi Nasution, formerly deputy of the Tanjung Karang high court in Lampung; and Mohammad Muhaimin, formerly chief of the religious high court in Semarang.

The odd one out is Iskandar Kamil, an Army major general and formerly a member of the House of Representatives.

The Supreme Court has been under strong pressure for some years now to clear the huge backlog of appeals. It has expanded from its original 45 justices to 51 to cope with the workload.

By January this year, however, it still had to clear 16,000 cases and the number grows each year by 2,000.

Chief Justice Soejono in his speech yesterday underlined that one of the requirements of a justice is that he or she must be above any influence and have the courage to make the right decisions.

He also urged the new justices to heed the criticisms against the court system, particularly the Supreme Court, in recent years and to the growing public demand and expectations of the courts.

Amid accusations that it lacked independence from the government, the Supreme Court over the past year has made a number of rulings that pass judgment against the government. (anr)