Theft in Supreme Court

A Supreme Court judge caught a thief red-handed, not in his house, on the road or in his automobile, but, of all places, in his chambers in the Supreme Court building. While surprising, this shows that even the chambers of a Supreme Court judge are far from being safe, especially considering the fact that the thief, according to the judge, was none other than one of the building's security guards.

Of course, a probe must be conducted into the disappearance of documents in this country's highest judicial body. It is important for us to know, for example, what documents have been stolen, what the motivation for the theft was and who the thief was working for.

We can ask, for example, how the Supreme Court handles its documents, related either to its internal affairs or to cases currently being processed. Aren't there more than 16,000 appeal cases yet to be settled whose files are kept in the Supreme Court?

Therefore the Supreme Court has to seriously deal with this matter as it is concerned with the rights of and justice for the parties whose cases the Supreme Court is handling. This theft case stresses that the Supreme Court should put in order not only normative cases like law enforcement and the upholding of justice, but also attend to the safety of its own documents and files.

Much of root of the problem stems eventually from the Supreme Court itself. It takes great seriousness and unusually hard work to uncover the court's internal problems. It would take even harder work to make the Supreme Court as an institution deserving of the label "Supreme".

-- Koran Tempo, Jakarta