Anita Rachman & Camelia Pasandaran – The imminent passage of amendments to the 2003 Law on the Constitutional Court could see key changes in the way the country's most highly regarded judiciary functions.
The House Legislation Body said on Monday that among the proposed amendments were an increase in the minimum and maximum age of justices, halving the length of tenure and delegating the authority to hear regional electoral disputes to district courts.
Nurul Arifin, a legislator from the Golkar Party, said there was still no agreement among parties on several points.
"One proposed amendment is to cut the justices' tenure to two and a half years, but Golkar wants it to remain at five years," she said. "Likewise the retirement age. The current law pegs it at 65 years, but we want it extended to 70 years."
The law also puts the minimum age for a Constitutional Court justice at 40, but the House is seeking to raise this to 50 years.
However, Arif Wibowo, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), questioned the wisdom of having older justices on the bench. "Is 50 an ideal age for a public official?" he asked.
He also pointed out the need for an ethics council for the court, comprising a member of the Judicial Commission, one justice each from the Constitutional and Supreme courts, a government representative and a House member.
"The establishment of an ethics council will allow for the dismissal of a justice for ethics violations, which the current law doesn't provide for," Arif said.
The House is also mulling relieving the Constitutional Court of the duty to hear election disputes. Subiakto, a legislator from House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, said that authority should be devolved to district courts, given the sheer number of disputes brought up at each regional poll.
"We consider that regional election disputes really exhaust the resources of the Constitutional Court," he said. "Therefore, one of the amendments being proposed would delegate electoral disputes to district courts."
The Constitutional Court has handled thousands of electoral disputes since taking over that role from the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Mahfud M.D. has previously called on officials at the local level, including from Regional Elections Commissions (KPUDs) and Regional Elections Supervisory Committees (Panwaslu), to handle the disputes themselves rather than inundate the court with "rubbish cases."
Subiakto said the House deemed it would degrade the court's role if most of its time was spent on discussing regional polling disputes. "Therefore we're seeking the court's opinion on the appropriateness of devolving this authority to district courts," he said.
For his part, Mahfud said he had no objections to the proposal or even to delegating the task back to the Supreme Court. However, Justice Akil Mochtar pointed out that in order to assign electoral disputes to district courts, there would be a slew of legislation required.
"If you want to change it, there are four laws that need to be amended," he told the House. He listed them as the 2004 Law on Regional Governance, the 2008 Amended Law on Regional Governance, the 2007 Law on Elections Organizers and the 2009 Law on Judicial Authority.
Akil added that while transferring the burden of hearing polling disputes would mean a lighter workload for the Constitutional Court, this task should not be shuffled around between institutions so frequently.
"I only want to remind that if you keep transferring the authority, the facilities that have been prepared [to handle disputes] will be rendered useless," he said.