Arghea Desafti Hapsari, Jakarta – The Constitutional Court has acknowledged that the deliberation process of the 2009 Supreme Court Law bore procedural flaws, but it decided to keep the law regardless.
The court Wednesday ruled that the law was to be retained "for the sake of the legal expediency principal".
"Despite the procedural flaws in the law's deliberation, the law's material does not cause legal problems," constitutional judge Ahmad Fadlil Sumadi said as he read out the verdict.
"If the law, which has become flawed procedurally, was averred as not legally binding, the circumstances would not be better," he added.
Several NGO activists filed for a judicial review request of the law in March last year. They argue that the law's deliberation process was against the constitution.
Petitioners have presented a witness, Febridiansyah, who told the court that several legislators had tried to express their refusal to then House speaker Agung Laksono's decision to deliberate the law during a hearing at the House of Representatives last year.
House regulation says that voting is to be conducted if a hearing becomes a deadlock. The hearing that deliberated the Supreme Court law, however, never went into voting.
Febri also said that, based on his counting, no more than 96 legislators had been present at the hearing.
The number was less than half of the total number of members of the House of Representatives. House regulation says that a decision can only be made in a hearing when it is attended by at least half of the total legislators.
One of the petitioners, Danang Widoyoko from Indonesia Corruption Watch, said after Wednesday's hearing that the court's decision to keep the law would be a bad precedent of other procedurally flawed laws. "Now legislators can desert [hearings] all they like," he added.
The move to request for a judicial review of the law came in 2009 amid concerns that Supreme Court justices were outdated. Then Supreme Court deputy chief Harifin A. Tumpa, now the court chief, collapsed when inaugurating six new justices in a ceremony early last year. Harifin was then 66 years old, the oldest justice at the court.
The incident happened not long after the endorsement of the Supreme Court law, which extends the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 67 to 70, despite that the average life expectancy in Indonesia is 65 to 67.
"The lawmakers and the Constitutional Court should be promoting young people and a Supreme Court that has a vision of corruption eradication. The old judges let corrupt officials walk free. They do not work in line with the spirit of today," he added.