Jakarta – The judiciary is, unfortunately, no stranger to misconduct and corruption due to its fair share of power.
In the latest scandal to hit the country's judicial power, the Attorney General's Office (AGO) arrested four judges last week on suspicion of taking bribes in exchange for acquitting three major palm oil groups from corruption charges last month.
One of the judges, Muhammad Arif Nuryanta, is accused of arranging a favorable verdict and paying off the three judges he picked for the trial after accepting Rp 60 billion (US$3.5 million) in bribes from two lawyers representing the companies. Arif served as the Central Jakarta District Court deputy head when the trial started in early 2024.
AGO investigators confiscated a bundle of cash in rupiah, Singaporean and United States dollars and Chinese yuan from the judges, in addition to some luxury cars from the lawyers.
The latest arrests come more than two decades after the Supreme Court launched judicial reforms in the early 2000s across district and high courts it manages, exposing its failure to curb corruption within its ranks.
The case only further confirms public suspicion that justice can be bought and the judiciary is just as corrupt as the other two branches of power, the executive and legislative.
Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) data shows that it arrested 31 judges on graft charges from 2010 to 2024, a minuscule number compared to the number of corrupt government officials and lawmakers.
But when judges are corrupt, it's hard to expect justice for all. The integrity that allows judges to treat everyone equally before the law should not be for sale. Rather, it should be a golden standard for all judges.
A Transparency International Indonesia (TII) survey released in 2022 found that people believed judges have the most opportunities to commit corruption, compared to other court officials. The survey also showed that less than half of the respondents believed the courts could provide fair decisions.
Another TII survey interviewing 35 legal practitioners discovered that the majority of respondents believed that ruling deliberation was the process most prone to corruption.
According to Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), at least 29 judges have been named suspects for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for granting favorable rulings for corruption defendants between 2011 and 2024.
The latest arrests of judges comes after the judiciary corps had their pay raised late last year at the end of the administration of Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, following a string of mass protests by the judges. Earlier this month, President Prabowo Subianto considered raising their salaries again to make them "unbribable".
But the problem of corruption in the judiciary needs to be addressed systematically rather than being seen as a consequence of poor wages.
Better recruitment and oversight systems may help reduce opportunities for corruption in the judiciary, which has been resistant to external supervision by the Judicial Commission. The Supreme Court has often ignored many of the commission's recommended sanctions against errant judges.
There is also a compelling reason to say that failure to discourage corruption among judges is the absence of deterrence.
Among the biggest scandals in the judiciary was a 2022 bribery case at the Supreme Court that implicated two justices and a handful of court officials, including its secretary and a clerk. One of the justices, Sudradjad Dimyati, was sentenced to eight years in prison, lighter than the 13 years the prosecutors had demanded. The Supreme Court later reduced his sentence to seven years, while the other justice was cleared of all charges.
Therefore, there is perhaps no other way to protect the public's confidence in the judicial system but to deter judges from committing corruption. We have seen a precedent when the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced former Constitutional Court chief justice Akil Mochtar to life in 2014 for accepting bribes to influence decisions on election disputes during his tenure at the court.
To maintain the credibility of our justice system, corrupt judges deserve the maximum sentence.
Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2025/04/22/judging-our-judges.htm