[Indonesian police say they have made significant progress in the hunt for the perpetrators of the Bali bombings. They say they've arrested the owner of a minivan which they believe was used in the car-bomb attack last month. But again, questions are again being raised about the efficiency of the Indonesian police in pursuing the investigation.]

Presenter/Interviewer: Linda LoPresti

Speakers: Professor Daniel Lev, University of Washington

Lev: "I think there's very little chance of that. The odds are distinctly against it. It's a legal system in disarray and the primary investigators here should be the police. The police are not really equipped to do this very well.

"Had the Indonesian brought the situation immediately under control after the explosion then they might have done something. But as it was, no. So I don't see much help."

Lopresti; Why do you think it is that way. Why do you think it's so weak that the justice system is so weak? Is it because it's been like that for such a long time?

Lev: "That's a very long story, and the destruction of the legal system – I use the word destruction advisedly, I think – really begins in the early 1960s, after the onset of guided democracy and the reason is, quite suddenly, the courts and the prosecution particularly and the police are politicised. They're turned to political use almost immediately by whoever can control them.

"Secondly the parliament is weakened. Various social organisations are weakened so that very little control is exercised over anybody – and the political and the administrative system, including the judicial institutions. In no time at all, first the prosecutors, then the judges, finally the advocates are corrupted. After the coup of 1965 when the political system is essentially and quite consciously based on the army, really there is no need for political leaders to be much concerned with law. And they aren't.

"The courts become even more corrupt, so does the prosecution, so do the police. By the time Suharto finally resigns, it's not simply the legal institutions, it is the whole of state institutions, the whole complex, the entire bureaucracy, both national and local, the courts, the prosecution, various ministries, the corruption runs so deep that few of them actually are concerned with their functions. They have become, in effect, fairly rapacious in their corruption.

"The consequence is that there's no way to repair the legal system now. That is to reconstruct those legal institutions without, either on the one hand fairly radical, revolutionary action if you will – literally firing all the judges at the Supreme Court level or replacing them. Replacing everybody in the chief public prosecution ..."

Lopresti: So starting from scratch?

Lev: "Starting from scratch. That's one way to do it. But to do that you have to have a political elite that is determined to do it. The problem is that for the time being there is a political elite that is not, again, terribly interested in strengthening legal institutions which will reduce the obvious strength of the political elite itself."

Lopresti: Yet after the fall of Suharto in 1998 there was a lot of international aid, money, coming into Indonesia to help build the justice and legal system. That obviously has had no effect.

Lev: "Well, it's really silly. All that aid coming in from abroad is not very well thought out at all and it frequently comes with the presumption – and this has not only to do with law but other fields as well – the assumption somehow that the law is divorced from the political system. It's divorced from political leadership.

"If you want a strong legal system, it actually has to be created and guaranteed and controls have to be imposed upon it. Now again, if your political elite knows that it will be restricted by such a process, it's hardly going to be favourable."

Lopresti: What do you make of this new anti-terrorism decree that the Indonesian government has brought in and are you concerned about a drfit back to authoritarian...

Lev: "Very much. It's not simply because of the draft bill on terrorism. And of course it's an attempt to impose fairly severe restrictions on the whole of society. Does that telegraph something that might be in the future again?. Yes of course it does.

"But particularly if the army refuses to move to the margins and particularly too if the US, Australia and several other governments decide that the army is essential the stabilisation of Indonesia.

"In that case the long-term interests of Indonesia would be sacrificed for the short-term interests of the US, Australia and the others who are now worried about terrorism as they were say 30/40 years ago when they were worried about communism.

"Now, even bere there's been a chance to begin to work through all of the hugely difficult problems that have to be resolved that threat looms again."