Nivell Rayda – The Corruption Eradication Commission and the Supreme Court have welcomed the newly passed Anti-Corruption Court bill and are preparing to handle cases outside of the nation's capital.

The bill, which the House of Representatives (DPR) unanimously passed on Tuesday, paved the way for the establishment of special courts to handle graft cases in all 33 provincial capitals. The current Anti-Corruption Court is under the umbrella of the Central Jakarta District Court and has the entire country as its jurisdiction.

Commission spokesman Johan Budi said the antigraft body, also known as the KPK, was ready to send its prosecutors to remote provinces.

"We have been sending our investigators to remote areas for years. Now we simply have to send our prosecutors as well," he said, adding that the bill presents some problems for local corruption cases now under investigation by the KPK.

"We have to wait until the local courts are fully established before the cases can move from investigation to prosecution. We won't have any problems with cases" in Jakarta, Johan said.

The commission is processing at least five cases that are considered to have taken place outside the jurisdiction of the capital, the most remote of them in the Supiori district of Papua.

Supreme Court spokesman Hatta Ali said it would take time to establish the courts outside of Jakarta because the court system lacked judges with the capacity to handle graft cases.

"We need at least six permanent judges at each district court and high court, which means we would require 660 certified judges," he said. "We also need to recruit ad-hoc judges and establish an internal regulation on the composition of judges for each case."

The bill states that there can be either three or five judges, with permanent judges comprising either a majority or a minority, depending on the type of cases under consideration.

Hatta said the internal regulation would determine the best composition of panels for a specific cases so that "there is legal certainty. The determining factor would most likely be the level of government officials involved and estimation of the losses to state."

The bill has drawn widespread criticism from antigraft groups and academics, who say several articles are vague and subject to multiple interpretations, thus leaving open loopholes for corruption suspects.

Such articles concern the power of the commission to prosecute graft cases and the presentation of wiretapped conversations as evidence before the court, which the bill simply states "must follow other laws," without further explanation.

Hasril Hartanto, an expert on law from the University of Indonesia, said the articles should be much more clearly defined to avoid "false interpretations of the law."