U.S. ambassador calls on prosecutors to restore trust

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The United States Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph L. Boyce has urged prosecutors in the country to win back the public trust in the state's legal institutions by showing high integrity and discretion.

The ambassador said that because public prosecutors were civil servants who worked on a government payroll, in a democracy, they were, as a matter of fact, accountable to the people.

"Meeting the expectations of the Indonesian people and gaining their trust and confidence is the key ingredient in maintaining the rule of law," he said in a seminar on management of public prosecution here on Friday.

He said the only thing that stood between order and chaos was respect for the rule of law, and if the trust was deteriorating the people might take the law into their own hands.

To effectively maintain order and to ensure justice in a democracy, the entire justice sector, as an institution, must perform in a fair and impartial manner to gain public trust, he said.

The envoy's statement came amidst mounting public skepticism over the country's poor law enforcement that has, for many years, been regarded as one of the most corrupt in the world, along with the police and the judiciary.

Earlier, the National Law Commision (KHN) branded the Attorney General's Office as the most secretive component of the legal system in the country and must therefore reform to regain the public trust.

Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a KHN member, said such reform should be aimed at establishing a transparent and accountable Attorney General's Office, one which also involved public participation.

She said that it needs to be restructured all the way down to the office's employees, who were resistant to reform. Such a program would ideally include recruitment, training and monitoring of the prosecutors.

Apart from the prosecutor's, Boyce also asserted that the police and the judiciary should make every effort to restore their tarnished image.

Forty prosecutors from all over the country attended the seminar and discussed a variety of issues including upholding transparency and accountability.

The seminar also dealt with how to handle corruption cases, money laundering and cyber-crimes.

Later in the day, Deputy Attorney General Soewarsono said that it would be an uphill battle for the public prosecutors to regain the public's confidence.

"However, we have taken efforts to improve our human resources," he said without elaborating.