Jakarta – A study into a graft case involving a prominent businessman and politician shows the strange and shoddy way the law is applied in the country, two judicial watchdogs say.
The analysis of the corruption trial of Nurdin Halid, a businessman and Golkar Party politician, at the South Jakarta District Court was sponsored by the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) and the University of Indonesia's Judicial Monitoring Society (MaPPI).
Former justice Johanes Djohansjah, former attorney AJ Day, legal academic Antonius P. Wibowo and lawyer Bambang Widjojanto, who researched the case, found that prosecutors and judges made a serious of errors when they took Nurdin to trial for misusing Rp 169 billion in funds from the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).
The study finds that prosecutor Arnold Angkow's indictment was obscure because it did not clearly state whether Nurdin had been charged with committing the crime, with helping commit a crime, or for commissioning the crime.
During a public discussion of the report on Thursday, AJ Day noted that Nurdin's defender, O.C Kaligis, should have objected to the indictment. He apparently did not, because clearly the obscure indictment advantaged the defendant, as the judges then did not have proper basis to hand down a verdict.
Neither were prosecutors specific enough in their application of the Criminal Code, charging Nurdin only under certain clauses in Article 415 of the code, AJ Day said, when they could have charged him under all of them, particularly those regarding the misuse of public funds.
The study also found that the judges' erred when they ruled the case was a civil matter and not a criminal one. Later they ruled Nurdin was innocent instead of dropping the charges and dismissing the case. By ruling Nurdin was innocent, the judges neglected all the evidence that the prosecutors presented at the trial, Day said.
The results of the study will be forwarded to the Supreme Court.
The ICW has already submitted 20 different legal case studies to the Supreme Court, but the nation's highest legal body has taken no action.
"Even if what we are doing is like rain in the desert, we will keep on going," Day said.
Iskandar Sonhadji of the ICW said after the discussion that judges here had yet to show any commitment to trying graft cases justly.
The judiciary's duty was not only to enforce the law but also to eliminate the flaws that exist in it, Iskander said. However, because of the likely influence of graft, judges were creating their own flaws and loopholes to free people who were clearly guilty, he said.
Nurdin has escaped prison twice. As the chairman of the Confederation of Primary Cooperatives Association (Inkud), he was pronounced innocent of the theft of Bulog funds by the South Jakarta District Court in June last year. On Dec. 15, he escaped a graft conviction for illegally importing 70,000 tons of sugar from Thailand, worth Rp 3.4 billion after a North Jakarta District Court ruled that the indictment against him was legally flawed and unacceptable.
In the latter case, Nurdin appealed the verdict, although it was in his favor.
Iskander said this was a likely trick to prolong the legal process, so that prosecutors could not propose a new indictment against him.