Constitutional Court chief justice Mahfud M.D. spoke before the 27th Congress of the Islamic Students Association in Depok on Tuesday (Nov. 9).
Jakarta, MK Online - Corruption on a massive scale was one of the catalysts of the 1998 reform movement in Indonesia, and even until now, it is still a dangerous disease that puts our nation in peril.
“Nowadays, there are almost no law enforcement agencies that can be trusted. The public even have this assumption: ‘if you have a problem, don’t go to law enforcement agencies. Deal with your problem on your own, or make your own rules,’” Constitutional Court chief justice Mahfud M.D. spoke before the 27th Congress of the Islamic Students Association on Tuesday (Nov. 9) in Depok.
He then explained people dealing with legal problems in Indonesia are oftentimes extorted or even told to pay a certain amount of money if they want to resolve them. Questions such as: ‘Under which penal codes violation do you want to be charged? How long do you want to be incarcerated? How much penalty can you afford to pay? Which privilege treatment or class do you prefer when you’re in prison?” are very common when someone deals with legal problems.
Mahfud said the issue of corruption had become a significant threat to the credibility of law in Indonesia; therefore, he continued, the main agenda of this country should be focused on corruption eradication.
“The reform movement in 1998 has made our objective focused on eradicating corruption. The background reason was that this country is corrupt; that’s why we had a constitutional reform to seal off all the loopholes that made corruption practices flourish in this country. Let’s do law reform, so that our legal system can counteract corruption,” he added.
Mahfud said further that there were two radical policies made in an effort to eradicate corruption in Indonesia. The first one was an illustrative national policy or amputation that discharged government officials and law enforcement officers with certain positions, titles, and ages working during the New Order era of Suharto.
“Then we appointed clean and courageous new officials and officers and mandated them with the tasks of processing and solving corruption cases in a timely manner. In some countries in Latin America, such illustrative national policies had been implemented and were proven to be effective in reducing corruption indices significantly,” Mahfud added.
The second national policy on combating corruption, Mahfud added, was the granting of pardon. This was chosen, he said, when the first illustrative national policy could not be effectuated due to strong refusal from the internal body of government.
“This policy essentially pardoned corruption practices that took place in the past and makes litigation unnecessary. However, it is conditional in nature because corruptors must return state assets without pursuing legal actions against the government,” Mahfud explained.
Besides the two policies on combating corruption, Mahfud said, Indonesia could take the example of China, which launched a large number of crackdowns on corruption. In recent years, China has sentenced to death or imprisoned thousands of its officials proven to be involved in corruption.
"Such measures were effective in reducing Indonesia’s corruption index, which is now much smaller than it was before 1998," Mahfud said. (Nano Tresna A.)
Tuesday, November 09, 2010 | 14:32 WIB 265