Agus Triyono & Ezra Sihite – Constitutional Court chief Mahfud M.D. said on Friday that anticorruption courts outside Jakarta should be disbanded and their cases handled by regular courts.

"The anticorruption courts in the regions are damaging [to the fight against corruption] and they seem to consider corruption as a normal thing," Mahfud said.

He said anticorruption courts in the regions did a poor job of prosecuting suspects, resulting in numerous acquittals. Their judges, he said, also lacked a deep knowledge of the law.

Judges at the anticorruption courts in the regions were often underperformers and lobbied people to get their job, he said. Mahfud said supervision of the courts was weak, making it easier for collusion to take place.

A public outcry has greeted the recent acquittals of graft suspects by anticorruption courts outside the capital.

The network of antigraft courts was established following the passage of the 2009 Law on Anti-Corruption Courts.

The law was prompted by a 2006 Constitutional Court ruling that called the Anti-Corruption Court in Jakarta unconstitutional because it was established under the Law on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) instead of having a separate legal basis.

"The Constitutional Court did not order the establishment [of antigraft courts] in the regions," Mahfud said. The demand for forming courts in the regions, he said, was the results of "the House [of Representatives] and the government being creative."

Mahfud said he was in favor of the Anti-Corruption Court being centralized in Jakarta. In the regions, he said, corruption cases could be heard by local courts using the Anti-Corruption Law.

Senior KPK figure M. Jasin agreed that the capital, where the process for recruiting judges was more stringent, was the only place suitable for the court.

KPK deputy chairman Bibit Samad Rianto said the 2009 law was at the core of the problem and needed to be reviewed. He said that while it was true that monitoring regional courts was difficult, without them, the central Anti-Corruption Court would be overwhelmed.

Martin Hutabarat, from House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, said an analysis was needed before deciding whether to disband the courts in the regions.

[Additional reporting Rizky Amelia, Ulma Haryanto & Anita Rachman.]