Febriamy Hutapea – Experts and activists have warned that the country's fight against corruption will suffer a serious blow if the House of Representatives fails to pass the antigraft court bill into law before the end of next month.
According to a 2006 ruling by the Constitutional Court, the country must have a new law on the Anti-Corruption Court by Dec. 19 or risk losing the legitimacy of the current court.
The Anti-Corruption Court, which has convicted several high-profile officials, including legislators from major political parties, was established under a law that also established the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The Constitutional Court ruled, however, that a separate law was needed to give the Anti-Corruption Court the proper legal basis.
Bivitri Susanti, who chairs the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies, said the bill had little chance of being passed into law by the December deadline if its deliberation was not completed before the new batch of lawmakers was sworn into office in October.
She said if the current lawmakers failed to wrap up the deliberations before their term ended in late September, the new lawmakers would have to start discussing the bill from scratch.
Based on past experience, Bivitri said, the next House will start working in October to determine priority bills and will only start discussing bills next year.
"So, the country has no choice but to endorse the bill in the current House period," she said.
Bivitri said she believed lawmakers were dragging their feet in endorsing the bill because many of them were involved in corruption cases.
"Six factions in the House support the government's stance to have more career judges rather than noncareer judges on the planned antigraft court," she said.
Bivitri said career judges were more likely than noncareer ones to be tainted by the culture of corruption in the country's judiciary.
Zainal Arifin Mochtar, a lecturer at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, said he doubted the antigraft court bill would be endorsed by next month.
He said one of the snags was the proposal in the bill to establish antigraft courts in each district in the country. "It's better to think of establishing antigraft courts in 33 provinces rather than discussing building a court in each of the country's 400 district."
Emerson Yuntho of Indonesian Corruption Watch said the bill had been watered down by the House. "The draft has gone far from the initial spirit to fight corruption."
"It's better if the president prepares for a government regulation in lieu of law [perpu]," he said. "There's no guarantee the bill will be passed in time to strengthen efforts to eradicate corruption, if we're looking at the current draft of the bill."