What next for the Supreme Court?

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)