UN mission and RI's legal system

There has been ample news coverage in the newspapers on the upcoming visit of a UN fact-finding mission under Special Rapporteur Dato Param Cumaraswamy, reportedly to assess Indonesia's legal system, while focusing on the independence of judges and law practitioners in particular.

As the issues in question involve the Commercial Court, the State Administrative Court and the Indonesian Human Rights Tribunal, only these three courts were expressly cited in the reports. In terms of the overall framework for the administration of justice, the Civil Court and the Criminal Court should also be included.

Amid the comments was one expressed by an authoritative source in the judiciary (see The Jakarta Post of July 5) who suggested that the current judicial system should be assessed as compared with what existed in the country some years before, and not with the legal system of a developed country. It sounds rather odd that such a naive opinion should have been expressed.

It must be argued that the Special Rapporteur should refer, for comparative purposes, to whatever system as may be appropriate. This cannot be otherwise.

But what is essential for top legal professionals in Indonesia to realize is that the UN mission will be here for only ten days (from July 15 to July 25). It would be unrealistic to expect too much from the mission, based on a ten-day visit.

Any search for a solution to problems in the current judicial system, which is based on the Dutch legal system from colonial times, will necessitate learning from the legal systems, including their judiciaries, of the industrialized countries too.

S. SUHAEDI, Jakarta