Jakarta – Indonesia's Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman said the country's legal system is in desperate need of a complete overhaul in order to restore confidence in the judiciary.
He said complicated problems thwarting his office and other judicial institutions could be overcome if current figures in the judicial bodies were replaced by new corruption-free staff, the Indonesian Observer reported yesterday.
"We need to replace people to combat the problems," he told a business forum in Jakarta on Thursday. "There is evidence that bribes have been paid to judges to influence their decisions," he said, referring to bribery involving senior judges within the Supreme Court and other courts.
He also said Indonesia's corrupt legal system is embarrassing. "Our current judicial system is an embarrassment. The recent decisions rendered on bankruptcy, corruption and administrative malfeasance cases have been heavily criticised," he noted.
Without going into specific details, he added that the existing judicial system is "archaic" and "cannot not fully respond" to efforts by his office to bring former President Suharto and his "cronies, errant bankers, recalcitrant debtors and corrupt public officials" to trial.
He said Indonesia's Supreme Court will soon have a new Chief Justice, who is expected to be a person of high integrity and will restore respectability "that the high office deserves". "The Chief Justice and his judges must now be persons above reproach," he added.
Among the candidates vying for the position of Chief Justice are former Justice Minister Muladi and human-rights official Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, the Indonesian Observer report said.
Blaming the rot in the justice system as a "result of the past three decades of neglect of the rule of law" when Mr Suharto was in power, Mr Marzuki said that for foreign and domestic confidence to be restored, a complete revamp of the judicial system was needed.
Indonesia has been trying to clean up its courts by selecting new High Court judges, but even trying to pick 18 honest and experienced Justices has been hard. Two months ago, an integrity test for aspiring judges passed only eight of 46 potential candidates.
Finding suitable candidates is difficult because frequent scandals have lowered the reputation of judges, and the country's judges are also paid poorly. Earlier in the year, Minister for Law and Legislation Dr Yusril Ihza Mahendra even suggested importing Dutch judges to sit on the High Court due to the shortage.