Judicial Oversight in Indonesia & Constraints Hampering Its Implementation
- September 16, 2020
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: IJRISS, Law
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VIII, August 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186
Judicial Oversight in Indonesia & Constraints Hampering Its Implementation
Fatahillah Abdul Syukur, PhD.
Faculty of Law, Universitas Pancasila, South Jakarta, Jakarta, 12630, Indonesia
Abstract: This paper analyses constraints hampering judicial oversight implementation in Indonesian courts. The author highlights some major problems faced by the Indonesian judiciary to implement supervision towards judges and court personnel when conducting their duties. The author examines external and internal mechanisms toward the Indonesian judicial system, including some recommendation to improve the implementation.
Keywords: Constraints, Judicial oversight, integrity, Indonesia.
I. INTRODUCTION
The struggle faced by the Indonesian judicial system in overcoming its notorious reputation can be traced back since the country’s independence in 1945. There have been three major constraints that smear courts’ name, which include corruption, complex proceedings and courts’ personnel low quality.
Corruption, collusion and nepotism have been the main problems that impede the judiciary to provide fair access to justice to the Indonesian people [1]. Dean contends [2]:
The court system in Jakarta is particularly rotten, to the extent that the government plans to relocate more than 70 per cent of Jakarta’s judges to the rural areas, replacing them with judges from areas outside the capital claimed not to be as corrupt (p. 8).
It has been suggested that the main cause of corruption in courts is the low income paid to judges. Some are forced to take bribes as additional earnings to cover their living costs [3]. Rais argues that there is more corruption based on the need to survive in Indonesian courts than corruption driven by greed [4]. The low income of judges occurred because ‘judges were seen simply as implementers and facilitators at the end of the “food chain”, unlike the government executives’ [5, p. 288]. Parties who had brought their cases to court also blamed on low income of judges for the corruption [6].
