Jakarta – A top graft buster has urged the country's highest court to end the House of Representatives' monopoly on selecting leaders for the national antigraft body, calling the move unconstitutional.

"There's no article in the Constitution that states explicitly that the House has the power to recruit or choose state officials," Bambang Widjojanto, a deputy chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK, said on Tuesday as quoted by Antara.

Bambang, testifying in a motion for a judicial review brought by the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) of Yogyakarta, said the selection for commissioners of the KPK and of the Judicial Commission, the body that oversees the country's judges, was beyond the purview of legislators.

"The House has limited functions as stated in articles of the Constitution, which include the legislative function to draft laws, [approve] the state budget and a supervisory function," he said.

He added that none of those three functions gave the House the power to vet officials for state bodies, which he argued ran the risk of conflicts of interests and political intervention.

Bambang also noted that there was no uniformity in the selection of leaders for the various state institutions, with some, like the House, allowed to choose their own heads, and others, like the KPK and the Judicial Commission, reliant on the House.

"This confirms that there is a discriminatory policy, besides the potential for intervention in KPK during the recruitment of its leaders," he told the court.

Tensions have frequently flared up between the KPK and the House, with the latter often proposing amendments to the KPK law that critics contend would weaken the antigraft commission.

Observers attribute the friction to the high number of legislator, serving and retired, arrested and duly tried, convicted and jailed by the KPK in a litany of corruption cases.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/keep-house-kpk-leaders-selection-process-graft-buster-says/