What next for the Supreme Court?

The House of Representatives has submitted 17 candidates for Supreme Court justices to the President. The Jakarta Post talked to former justice Adi Andojo Sutjipto who now heads the independent anti-corruption team.

Question: Are you satisfied with the new process of selecting justices?

Answer: Not 100 percent, but the fit and proper tests at least support the future recruitment of credible justices. The outcome shows political considerations when it should have been based entirely on merit. In the questioning the candidates, questions like whether they have ever taken bribes, or whether they were taken before or after a judgment was passed, were a waste of time ... who would confess to that?

(The candidates questioned) are career judges with over 30 years of experience. The questions should not be too detailed, but focus on mentality and morality and whether they read enough.

Recommendations were allowed by House factions for non-career judges, so political considerations may be inevitable.

If that is the case, the selected justices wouldn't be objective. What if their party was involved in a case at the Supreme Court? What if a justice recommended by a political party became chief justice? He would not be impartial for sure.

Are you optimistic about the new justices?

Not too optimistic -- given their age. At 63 a justice would hardly be able to resolve the pile of thousands of unsettled cases there. A new justice, more so a non-career one, would have to learn for one year, including about jurisprudence, before he can make a judgment. Then at 65 he would retire.

What other factors make you less than optimistic?

The fit and proper tests revealed that the candidates don't read enough to be able to make good judgments. They should know of the changes in common law. Those who don't read much would make judgments based on routine (considerations); in this condition no case is difficult for a career judge.

But their judgments reveal they're stuck in their old ways, they don't want to learn even about (similar cases) in neighboring countries. The Supreme Court's library has enough good books but they're hardly read. A justice would have to have at least a passive command of English to be able to make comparisons with similar cases in other countries.

An exception is the commercial courts in which judges are forced to read because it's a new (field).

A good side (of the new selection) is that they only selected 17 (instead of the initial plan to select 46 candidates). That wouldn't be rational because supervision of collusion possibilities would be even more difficult.

More justices would mean more staff, so how many more people would clog the Supreme Court, how many more would be involved (in collusion)?

What changes are needed now that the Supreme Court has new justices?

Judgments must be uniform; there have been wildly differing decisions over similar cases. This can be checked by computer -- a plan which was stopped years ago. But yes, it would be just the same (if bribes were involved).

So far the justices have had so much power ...

They've been untouchable. But once a justice is brought to a court, then there should be some change. Our team is working on the cases of three justices (suspected of corruption). The public can hope for better justice once we succeed.

Reports have come in since the Attorney General's office announced that it was waiving the (law) on punishing those who gave bribes, if they were willing to testify against justices.

With such guarantee, people should be willing to report; collusion involving justices has been among the most difficult to prove.

Would the new justices be able to face the corruption said to be pervasive in the Supreme Court?

It will be quite difficult. If old justices are still corrupt -- and no actions have been taken against them -- the new ones might be contaminated. At least they would be quite nervous ...

You said corruption is pervasive from bottom to top levels at the Supreme Court, even from the parking attendant. What is the role of the latter?

Introducing an interested party to the clerks handling the case in question, and so on up to the justice's assistant ... Those who give bribes are clever, they know that you shouldn't give big payments first. It starts with sending food, for instance, and when one finds his objective is reached then it's something else ...

What have you been offered in your experience?

When I was a judge in Ponorogo (East Java) I was once offered an Omega watch, then a woolen cloth; in Semarang, someone tried to bribe me with Rp 200,000, this was in 1974 when my monthly salary was Rp 70,000. Then there was this very beautiful woman just like a film star who gave me her phone number and address -- I ripped it up after she had left because then I might think of calling her whenever I had a row with my wife. (anr)