Supreme Court under fire over Tommy's acquittal

Abu Hanifah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) criticized on Friday the Supreme Court for its failure to live up to the public's sense of justice.

PDI Perjuangan strongly questioned the Supreme Court on why it didn't include the acquittal of fugitive Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra from corruption charges in its report to the Annual Session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).

"We question why the Supreme Court did not report the case," PDI Perjuangan faction spokesman Amri Hasan said, while delivering his party's review of the Supreme Court's accountability speech.

The Assembly factions presented their assessments of the accountability of high state institutions on Friday.

He said the Supreme Court's decision to acquit the youngest son of former president Soeharto of the widely condemned graft case had insulted the sense of justice among the public, who have been demanding that the supremacy of the law be upheld.

The Court overturned on Oct. 1 the 18-month prison sentence passed onto Tommy by a previous Supreme Court panel of justices.

Justice M. Taufik, who led the panel of judges, said the Supreme Court had accepted the arguments forwarded in a request for a review of the previous verdict on Tommy, thus annulling the Court's previous ruling.

A panel of Supreme Court justices in November last year sentenced Tommy to 18 months in jail for corruption in a 1996 land swap deal between his wholesale company PT Goro Batara Sakti and the State Logistics Agency (Bulog). Tommy has been on the run since then.

Golkar, however, did not specify cases handled by the court in its review of the court's accountability, but said the Supreme Court should boost its performance because there were many verdicts that it had made, which were against the public's sense of justice.

Golkar also said that the Supreme Court had failed to provide a satisfactory service to the public in handling most cases. "People have yet to receive a quick, simple and low cost service to have their cases handled by the Court," the party spokesman said.

PDI Perjuangan faction also questioned the commitment of Supreme Court justices to combat corruption, collusion and nepotism.