Camelia Pasandaran – The country's courts top the list of at least 268 public complaints received by the presidentially-appointed judicial mafia task force since its establishment in December, the task force's secretary general said on Friday.
Denny Indrayana said public complaints received focused on a host of issues, including court rulings, corruption cases and land disputes, as well as poor services rendered by state institutions including the courts, the National Police and the Attorney General's Office.
"Of the complaints received, we are currently reviewing 224 of them," Denny said, adding that of the 268 reports, at least 29 targeted the Supreme Court.
"Another 65 complaint reports target the lower courts. A total of 69 reports target the police and 49 others are aimed at the AGO," Denny said.
The task force was formed to spearhead the war against corruption within state institutions, particularly after recordings surfaced featuring top AGO officials allegedly plotting with case brokers how to fabricate charges against two antigraft commissioners to thwart an investigation into Anggoro Widjojo.
"Complaints we have received on corruption cases amount to 39. We have also received at least 72 cases involving land disputes."
Vowing that it would continue to work towards improving the performance of the National Police, the AGO and the courts, Denny said the task force would also begin to investigate complaints in regard to the use of case brokers to commit tax fraud.
"We will go after those cooking the books at the National Police, the prosecutors' offices, all judiciary offices and the Supreme Court. There are cases where law firms at the end of the year do not submit tax reports and are therefore evading taxes.
One method to combat brokers is to take firm action against law enforcers and advocates who manipulate the payment of taxes. We will be working with the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK], the tax office within the Finance Ministry and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center [PPATK]," Denny said.
Febridiansyah from Indonesia Corruption Watch said on Friday that the Task Force was not enough to eradicate judicial mafia practices. "The first thing the president must do is conduct a reshuffle of top officials within the National Police and the AGO," Febridiansyah said.
He explained that an independent body like the judicial mafia task force lacked teeth in regard to following up on public reports over graft, which he said was "a systemic disease" within law-enforcement agencies.
Launched to combat graft, it made its mark this year when it made an unannounced inspection at the Pondok Bambu Women's Penitentiary, where it found certain high-profile inmates, including convicted case broker Artalyta Suryani, enjoying special privileges.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's programs to root out graft included bureaucratic reform within state institutions, one of them being the Supreme Court which was part of the pilot project for bureaucratic reform in 2007 that saw salary hikes of up to 300 percent to discourage graft.
Up until December, the bureaucratic reform team noted that the Supreme Court had yet to submit its audit results from an independent auditor.
Roy Valiant Salomo, an expert on bureaucracy at the University of Indonesia, warned that the latest reforms missed the mark. "Bureaucratic reform is not only about remuneration," he explained. "The main requirement for bureaucratic reform is a change in mind-set."