Indonesia has specifically stated that people's productive years are between the ages of 18 and 55, but there is little agreement on an appropriate retirement age.

Educators and scientists can work for paid employment until they are 60 years old, and police and military generals until 58. Judges will set a new record at 70, after the House of Representatives passed the bill on the Supreme Court last week. The retirement age for Supreme Court justices sparked a heated debate, with some groups accusing the highest judicial institution of seeking to prolong the term of then chief justice Bagir Manan.

The allegations proved baseless as Bagir eventually retired last month. Yet the controversy dragged on until the day the House approved the bill.

That the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) forced the House only to work more rather than to change the article on the retirement age is indicative that the debate missed the point anyway.

The issue of retirement age was blown out of proportion when the public overlooked the more pressing issue of reform, which has eluded the Supreme Court since the winds of change started blowing in 1998.

The newly passed bill keeps the Supreme Court unsupervised, dismissing a checks-and-balances mechanism in the judicial branch of power.

The Judicial Commission, which was originally established to prevent the Supreme Court from holding absolute power, is authorized only to conduct ethical investigations into judges, according to the bill.

This reduces the Constitution's mandate for the Judicial Commission to uphold the integrity and dignity of judges.

The bill says the Supreme Court holds the highest authority to supervise the judicial process at all court levels, putting the Judicial Commission at a lower position than the Supreme Court. This article goes against the wisdom of supervision, which should be conducted by an outside party.

Knowing that internal supervision is prone to collusion and corruption, the government plans to scrap the inspectorate general as a supervisory institution of the bureaucracy and introduce external supervision.

While the bureaucracy, which is regarded as a corruption-infested institution, is looking for change, the Supreme Court is resisting reform.

A blueprint of reform within the Supreme Court was introduced in October 2003 to build an accountable, transparent and competent judiciary. Many have expected the reform to put an end to the "judicial mafia" or judicial corruption, in which judges choose money over justice.

Former chief justice Bagir Manan repeatedly denied there was any mafia. But one of the serving Supreme Court justices, Artidjo Alkostar, says the mafia prevails, although it is not visible.

Bagir himself once faced allegations of accepting a bribe, when businessman Probosutedjo, who is a half-brother of former president Soeharto, confessed in 2005 to being asked for money to have the Bagir-led Supreme Court panel of justices acquit him. The businessman said he had handed over Rp 16 billion, Rp 5 billion of which was allocated for Bagir.

Corruption Eradication Commission investigators searched the office of the powerful Bagir, who was later found to be clean.

The Corruption Court finally sentenced five Supreme Court clerks, but dismissed any link between them and the panel of justices. The public had expected the convicts to bark back at the justices by appealing the verdict, but that never eventuated.

A lot has actually been done in line with the blueprint of judicial reform, which was drafted with full support from the multidonor Partnership of Governance Reform. The salary of judges of all levels has been significantly increased in a bid to prevent judges from being tempted by corruption, transparency in case-handling mechanisms has been implemented and the Judicial Commission has been involved in recruiting Supreme Court justices.

But the reform appears to stop at nonsubstantial issues. The blueprint's recommendation for improvement in the supervision mechanism of the Supreme Court has been stalled by the newly endorsed bill. The nonreformist bill is the work of the political elite in the executive and legislative branches of power, which should have encouraged and expressed their political will to realize the long-sought judicial reform.

At a time when the public's trust in the judiciary remains low, both the House and the government have colluded to send the efforts to reform the Supreme Court back to square one.