Hans David Tampubolon, Jakarta – The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) says that the Supreme Court has yet to display a serious commitment to eradicate corruption from the country.

"Instead of giving maximum punishment to offenders who have been proven to have conducted corruption, the trend of punishment is the opposite one. Most of the punishments or charges are usually probations or even releasing the offenders from any charge altogether," ICW Law Researcher Febri Diansyah told The Jakarta Post via email in Jakarta on Friday.

Febri added that ICW at least found 13 cases, whose offenders were only sent to serve less than one year of prison time or in other words only a probation in the year 2008 and 2009. "Three of them were at the Supreme Court level. This phenomenon surely hurts the public's sense of justice," he said.

ICW research data shows that the first offender who was given a probation punishment was Mardijo, a former Central Java Regional Representatives Council (DPRD) chairman.

Mardijo was implicated in a double-booking scandal of the Central Java regional budget for the year 2003, and he was sent to serve only one year of imprisonment.

The latest offender in 2009 was Lukman Sukamto, the former employment analyst at the Probolinggo Religious Affairs Department. He was charged with one year of imprisonment due to his involvement in a graft scandal taking place during department's employee recruitment in 2004.

According to Febri, charging corrupters with a probation punishment violates Law No. 31/1999 on Anti Corruption.

"The Anti Corruption Law clearly states that corruption is an extra ordinary crime, so it must be eradicated using extra ordinary measures as well," he said.