July 9, 2011 · 20:42

Indonesia updates

Two bits of news came out today that throw up further questions about Indonesia’s legal system. Over a year ago, I mentioned a case in which an Indonesian woman, Slamet Yuwono, was sued for defamation after she’d posted negative comments on Facebook. At the time, she had won on appeal. However, now the Supreme Court has found her guilty and sentenced her to six months imprisonment. According to an interview in The Jakarta Post, her lawyer claimed:

Making a comment is everybody’s right… If that kind of regulation is implemented, there would be many Indonesians in jail because of negative comments on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

In other news, according to The Jakarta Post, President Yudhoyono issued a decree to temporarily suspend Imas Dianasari, judge allegedly caught accepting a bribe on June 30. Unilaterally suspending judges is, to say the least, an exceptional power, granted in response to concerns over the corruption in Indonesia’s judiciary. As far as I can recall, this is the first time under SBY’s administration Indonesia that the president suspended a judge (although I’m not sure on this point). It’ll be worth keeping an eye out to see how this power is used in the future.

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Filed under corruption, indonesia, libel

July 9, 2011 · 02:11

"Shedding Light on Burma’s Judicial System"

Htet Aung, a journalist for The Irrawaddy, has written a fascinating account of a recent case in Burma’s judicial system. Unlike most news articles about courts in Burma, the litigants in this case aren’t high-profile political dissidents but rather farmers and workers. Their only crime was to resist attack from workers whose boss had close connections with Burma’s economic and military elite. The article is striking in that it shows how corruption and cronyism in Burma have filtered down throughout the judicial system. Unfortunately, this is the type of judicial corruption that is particularly problematic to uproot.

Aung Thein, a public interest lawyer associated with the National League for Democracy, was particularly critical of the courts. Htet Aung writes:

President Thein Sein pledged in his first presidential speech that the new government must carry out “clean and good governance.” Asked whether a reform of the judiciary should be one of the first priorities of the new administration, Aung Thein said, “Handing out the maximum sentence is such an easy job. Even a court clerk can do that.”

That highlights a crucial difference between the “rule of law” and “law and order.” The latter simply concerns controling crime, whereas the former requires elites and government officials to subject themselves to the law.

I encourage you to read the entire article here. I hope Htet Aung and his colleagues at The Irrawaddy continue to publish articles like this one about the courts.

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Filed under Burma, corruption, judicial independence, Myanmar

July 7, 2011 · 13:39

Friendship money

“Friendship money.” That’s the euphemism currently employed in Indonesia to describe Democratic Party legislator M. Nazaruddin’s “presents” to members of the Constitutional Court. According to The Jakarta Post, Nazaruddin gave court members S$120,000 (approximately $97,700). Constitutional Court secretary-general Janedri M. Gaffar testified before the House’s ethics council about the allegations and claimed the court returned the money (interestingly, he seems to claim there was “a receipt for the return of the money to Nazaruddin”, suggesting there was a paper trail).

As I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, corruption is nothing new in Indonesia’s judiciary. However, until recently the Constitutional Court had a fairly clean reputation. Now, even if the justices did indeed return the money and are cleared of ethics violations, the stain might last. As such, it’s worth pondering why politicians would bother to bribe the Constitutional Court at all. Many of the cases that come before the court concern relatively minor policy issues, which one exception: elections. For political elites, elections are perhaps the most important policy issue.

Thus, these allegations are interesting in light of recent proposals in the House to remove elections cases from the Court’s jurisdiction. Without elections cases, the Court will still have jurisdiction over several important policy areas, but ones that affect the political elite indirectly. Unfortunately, I don’t have the contacts within Indonesia’s legislature to test this theory, but it’s possible that removing elections from the Court’s jurisdiction was partly a commitment strategy to protect the Constitutional Court from corruption (a tad idealistic, I know, but not unheard of). Either way, it will be interesting to observe allegations of corruption against the Constitutional Court over the next few years and whether or not they abate after the reforms take hold.

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Filed under indonesia, Mahkamah Konstitusi

June 28, 2011 · 21:34

And the second trial moves on

VOA Khmer has some more analysis of the second trial at the Khmer Rouge. Two key issues are whether the (admittedly less legalistic) 1979 trial under the Vietnamese or the 1996 amnesty preclude another trial. John Ciorciari, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Michigan (my home institution), says no to both questions. Read on here to find out more about the debate.

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Filed under Cambodia, Khmer Rouge Tribunal

June 27, 2011 · 01:57

More trouble with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

It’s been a while since we’ve seen much news regarding the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The second trial, featuring Nuon Chea (Brother Number 2), Khieu Samphan (former head of state), Ieng Sary (former foreign minister), Ieng Thirith (minister for social affairs), is due to start soon. Unlike Duch, these four defendants allege their innocence and vow to fight the charges.

However, a new dispute appears to have broken out between the Cambodian and international members of the tribunal. The international prosecutors want to bring several more defendants before the trial, while the judges seem to want to avoid further prosecutions. In fact, the behavior of some of the judges has been shockingly unprofessional. According to the BBC:

They [the judges] warned they would punish a “disloyal staff member” they suspected of leaking information. And they “welcomed” the resignation of international staff who disagreed with their approach to investigations, one of whom referred to a “toxic atmosphere of mutual mistrust” in a “professionally dysfunctional office”.

[Judge] Blunk also rebuked a journalist who asked whether the judges were trying to “bury” the third case, telling him: “The use of the word ‘bury’ is insolent, for which you are given leave to apologise within two days.”

Of course, as everybody knows, the best way to inflame a reporter’s charge is to try to attack the messanger. BBC also interviewed some Cambodian activists who suspected that the United Nations simply wants to wrap up the trials as soon as possible in order to save money.

Overall, this is a sad state of affairs for the KRT process and a far cry from what its supporters had hoped. It looks less and less likely that the KRT will have any meaningful impact on the Cambodian legal system. Perhaps the second trial at least will provide enough of a sense of justice to allow Cambodians to close the book on this part of their history.

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Filed under Cambodia, Khmer Rouge Tribunal