Dio Ashar Wicaksana – Conflict between the Attorney General's Office (Kejaksaan) and the National Police (Polri) has once again attracted public attention. This followed the extraordinary decision by the police to charge former Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes (Jampidsus), Febrie Adriansyah, with corruption and money laundering, after raiding his private residence in early July.
Febrie is not the first law enforcement official to face legal process, and the police seem to have strong preliminary evidence to investigate him. However, his case turned political when President Prabowo approved the transfer of Febrie's case from the police to prosecutors.
The decision is believed to have been made by Prabowo following a series of meetings between the president and several members of his cabinet, including Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin. Febrie is known to have powerful allies within the Indonesian Military (TNI), who supported him at the Kejaksaan.
Prabowo's transfer of the case is legally problematic. Under Indonesia's criminal justice system, the police can transfer a case to prosecutors only after its investigation is declared complete. The president has no authority to intervene in this process.
Many therefore think the transfer was a managed compromise between the two law enforcement institutions.
What happens next is still uncertain. The police declared Febrie a suspect, only to have prosecutors reverse this, before declaring him a suspect again.
But whatever the outcome might eventually be for Febrie, his case is just the latest chapter in the long-running story of rivalry between the Polri and the Kejaksaan.
Historical enmity
This rivalry can be traced back to the period after Indonesia's independence.
The main issue then was which of the two institutions should control the pre-trial investigation process. This is an important stage in criminal law enforcement as it involves significant discretionary powers affecting human rights, such as the authority to arrest, search premises, and detain suspects.
Historically, prosecutors were originally responsible for supervising police investigations. However, the police were never comfortable with that arrangement.
As early as 1953, the police rejected the supervisory role of prosecutors and objected to being described in the Herziene Indonesisch Reglement (HIR, the colonial era procedural law) as hulpmagistraat, a term that can be translated as 'assistant to the prosecutor.' The police viewed the term negatively because it suggested a subordinate position.
They were concerned that such a status would allow prosecutors to control and direct police activities.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, argued that some form of supervision was necessary. Without it, they feared that Indonesia could move toward a police-dominated system in which coercive powers, such as arrest and seizure, might be used for purposes beyond legitimate evidence gathering.
The enactment of separate laws for prosecutors (Law 15 of 1961 on the Basic Principles of the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Indonesia) and the police (Law 13 of 1961 on the Basic Provisions of the Indonesian National Police) further strengthened the position of the police. These laws gave the police primary responsibility for criminal investigations, while prosecutors were largely limited to conducting supplementary investigations and handling cases in court.
However, the laws did not clearly define the relationship between the two institutions. It remained unclear whether prosecutors could directly conduct investigative activities and use coercive measures during additional investigations. This unresolved issue continues to be a subject of debate in discussions on criminal procedure reform.
In 1981, prosecutors formally lost their authority to supervise police investigations. The new Criminal Procedure Code (Kitab Hukum Acara Pidana, KUHAP) passed that year introduced the principle of 'functional differentiation', which separated the functions of investigation and prosecution.
Under this system, the police became the sole investigators, and prosecutors were prohibited from intervening in police investigations.
Superficial harmony
The biggest problem underlying the rivalry between prosecutors and the police, and which ultimately led to repeated efforts to revise the KUHAP, was the creation of a superficial institutional balance rather than a genuine solution to the struggle over control of the pre-trial investigation process.
Most importantly, the 1981 KUHAP failed to establish an effective mechanism for reviewing and overseeing pre-trial investigations. As a result, a criminal justice system emerged that granted law enforcement institutions broad discretionary powers with limited checks and balances, particularly during the pre-trial investigation stage.
For this reason, proposals to revise the KUHAP have consistently included the introduction of a 'Preliminary Examining Judge' (Hakim Pemeriksa Pendahuluan or HPP). The HPP was designed to provide judicial oversight of investigative actions from the moment a person is designated as a suspect through the application of coercive measures such as arrest, search, and detention.
The goal was to ensure that such decisions are not left entirely to investigators' discretion.
Unlike the existing pre-trial mechanism (praperadilan), which reviews actions only after they have occurred, the HPP was intended to provide oversight from the outset of the process, thereby safeguarding due process and preventing abuses of power.
The HPP would also have had the authority to assess whether sufficient preliminary evidence exists, and to provide guidance to investigators regarding the adequacy of evidence contained in the case file.
But the 2025 revision of the KUHAP did not resolve the long-standing struggle over authority in the pre-trial investigation process between prosecutors and the police.
While it did strengthen the protection of individual rights by expanding judicial oversight of some coercive measures – including the designation of suspects and certain investigative actions that require judicial authorisation – these reforms remain limited. The HPP sought by reformers was not included.
Institutional accountability
The Polri-Kejaksaan rivalry stems from deeper structural problems within the institutional design of Indonesia's law enforcement system.
In a true rule of law system, checks and balances ensure that no single institution exercises power without restraint. Instead, institutions are expected to monitor, limit and correct one another to prevent abuses of authority.
By contrast, under Indonesia's legal and political system, state institutions are discouraged from interfering with one another's functions to avoid conflict, embarrassment or public controversy.
This issue is particularly relevant given that Indonesia's weakest performance in the global rule of law index has consistently been in the criminal justice sector.
Meaningful reform of Indonesia's criminal justice institutions is likely to take considerable time, especially given (limited) revisions to KUHAP were only recently completed. Nevertheless, it is crucial for policymakers to pay greater attention to this issue in the years ahead.
If the current approach continues to prioritise superficial harmony rather than genuine institutional accountability, it will be difficult to expect law enforcement agencies to operate in an impartial and independent manner.
Under such conditions, open conflicts between the Kejaksaan and the Polri are likely to continue to be interpreted more as political struggles than as legitimate disagreements over law enforcement and the administration of justice.