Govt, House undecided over Corruption Court judge composition

A member of the House of Representatives committee working on the Corruption Court bill says that the committee is still debating with the government about the proper composition of court judges.

"We want to have more ad-hoc (appointed) judges, while the government insists on having more career judges," Lukman Hakim from the United Development Party (PPP) faction said at the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Wednesday.

"The government said that career judges must be prioritized and that for now, it is hard to find sufficient human resources for ad-hoc judges," he added.

The Corruption Court, as of now, has five judges. Three of them are ad-hoc judges, while the others are career judges.

However, the current Corruption Court bill, aiming to revise the Corruption Court Law, does not firmly stipulate the exact composition of judges. The bill only says that the judges consist of a combination of ad-hoc and career judges.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) and anti-graft activists demand that there must be more ad-hoc judges than career ones, because ad-hoc judges are considered to be more professional.

The bill must be passed into law by December 2009, or the court would lose its legal standing, according to a 2006 Constitutional Court ruling.(hdt)