[Kabar-indonesia] JP: Reward and punishment system for judges 'crucial'

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post 
Monday, July 3, 2006

Reward system for judges 'crucial'

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has been told to introduce a reward and punishment system for 
judges in an effort to fight corruption in the judicial system.

"Rewards should be given to judges for working hard and maintaining their 
integrity," Anticorruption Court judge I Made Hendra Kusuma told The Jakarta Post 
here Saturday.

"The President should also introduce sanctions, such as termination of 
employment, for judges who perform poorly," he said.

Hendra said the current punishments meted out to bad judges, including forced 
relocation to smaller cities, were not strict enough and were not effective 
in making judges wary of corruption.

"The recruitment of new judges should also be transparent and objective. The 
list of names should be printed in the mass media so people can evaluate and 
monitor their reputations," he said.

Judges and other court officials are often accused of corruption, with many 
allegedly taking bribes from defendants and their lawyers or friends seeking 
acquittals and lenient sentences.

Major bribery cases have included one that involved judge-turned lawyer 
Harini Wijoso, who once defended business tycoon Probosutedjo, the half-brother of 
former president Soeharto.

Harini was sentenced Friday to four years in prison for attempting to bribe 
Supreme Court chief Bagir Manan, while her cohort, Pono Waluyo, herself a 
Supreme Court clerk, received three years in jail over the same case.

Hendra said the welfare of judges also needed to be improved in order to 
direct their focus to their state duties.

"An anticorruption judge receives Rp 8.5 million per month, with a fee of Rp 
300,000 every time he or she deals with the trial," he said.

"It would be good if their income could match the income of state-owned firm 
executives. This could make judges less vulnerable to bribes due to their 
financial adequacy," Hendra said.

He also said judges needed to improve their faith and religious practices to 
help them stop being involved in sinful acts, particularly corruption.

However, a member of the Judicial Commission, Zaenal Arifin, said the higher 
income of judges would not matter as long as the authorities increased their 
commitment to improving the country's legal system.

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, a lawmaker with the House's Commission III for 
legal affairs, said more female judges should be recruited to boost fairness in 
the judicial system.

"At least 30 percent of judges in Indonesia should be women," said 
Nursyahbani, who is also a noted women's and human rights activist.

Meanwhile, prominent human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis recently said the 
code of ethics for judges, which permits the acceptance of gifts, was a 
betrayal of the ethics and the spirit of judges needed to eradicate corruption, 
collusion and nepotism.

Such misleading ethics need to be revoked because they have made the legal 
system a trading place for verdicts in which a sentence depended on the 
magnitude of a gift, he added.

Todung said the Attorney General's Office and the Corruption Eradication 
Commission should not yield to such codes of ethics as the acceptance of gifts 
should be interpreted as an act of corruption.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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