Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has come under fire from human rights groups as being execution-happy, with campaigners pointing out that 19 convicted criminals have been put to death on his watch.
The administrations of his predecessors, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, saw only four executions between them, according to activists from the human rights group Imparsial. They have called on Mr Yudhoyono to grant clemency to all death-row prisoners.
Three Australians are on death row in Bali for their part in a heroin smuggling racket – Sydney men Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, found to have been the gang's ringleaders, as well as Brisbane courier Scott Rush.
Despite the apparent enthusiasm of some members of the Supreme Court to have the executions of these three and others on death row expedited, Indonesian law expert Tim Lindsey believes it is "very unlikely" the Australian trio will face a firing squad any time soon.
"They still have one more level of appeal – the PK, or peninjauan kembali, sometimes known as a judicial review," said Professor Lindsey, head of the Asian Law Centre at Melbourne University. "The law regarding the PK says quite clearly that a request for a PK in the Supreme Court cannot be limited by a particular period of time."
Supreme Court chief justice Harifin Tumpa claimed two weeks ago that an edict being prepared by the court would give prosecutors new powers to speed up the path to executions.
Professor Lindsey said it was "extremely unlikely" that the situation would change.
"This is because there is an election coming up in a few weeks and the parliament has a huge backlog of legislation it is considering," he said. "Also, the parliament has been considering a revision of the criminal code for decades now."
Juniadi Simun, from the rights group Imparsial, this week called for the death penalty to be scrapped altogether, saying it had "no deterrent effect" since "the number of drug users and traffickers is increasing from year to year".
Mr Simun said the courts had imposed 116 death sentences in the past decade, with 70 of these being for drug trafficking, 37 for murder and nine related to terrorism.
Mr Yudhoyono had rejected several appeals for clemency, he said. The President has stated his aversion to granting clemency in drug cases, something the three death-row Australians are well aware of.
The Australians also failed to have the death penalty overturned in a landmark Constitutional Court case last year, leaving their application for judicial review the only feasible avenue for avoiding the firing squad.
Mr Simun said that even though scrapping the death penalty altogether required political will and would take time, Mr Yudhoyono could fight for a "political breakthrough" by granting clemency to all death-row prisoners.