The House of Representatives' law commission, plans to conduct fit-and-proper tests on 15 Supreme Court judge candidates proposed by the Judiciary Commission.
Chairman of House Commission III on law and human rights, Benny K. Harman, confirmed to The Jakarta Post on Thursday that his commission would thoroughly check the track records of the candidates by the end of this month.
"We will hold a commission meeting on the issue next week," said Benny, a Democratic Party member.
The judicial commission chief, Busyro Muqqodas, submitted the candidate names to the House Speaker Marzuki Alie, on Wednesday.
Four of the candidates are noncareer judges, while the rest are career judges.
The non-career judges are Surya Jaya, Salman Luthan, Basuki Rekso Wibowo, and Yohanes Sogar Simamora, while the career judges are Soltoni Mohdally, Madya Suhardja, Sjam Amansjah, Nommy Siahaan, Soemarno, Abdul Wahid Oscar, Supandi, Achmad Yamani, Purnawati, Fransiscus Loppy, and Muhammad Saleh.
Marzuki said that he hoped the fit-and-proper test could be completed before Dec. 5.
One of House Commission III members, Nasir Jamil from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) faction, told the Post the commission planned to conduct a much tighter fit-and-proper test on the candidates.
"The content of our inquiries will be more systematic and more focused," he said.
"Therefore, we hope that we will be able to secure the best Supreme Court judges who will create a clean, professional and dignified judicial system," he added.
One of Benny's deputies, Tjatur Sapto Edi from the National Mandate Party (PAN) faction, said the commission would pick five out of the 15 aspiring candidates.
However, Nasir felt the commission needed to select more Supreme Court judges from the list of candidate.
"Until now, the commission has yet to establish a fixed number of Supreme Court judges, however, I believe that we only need seven or eight judges," he said.
Separately, Illian Deta Artasari, the coordinator on judicial system monitoring at Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), told the Post that she thought the candidates' names were fairly credible.
"ICW conducted research recently and discovered 25 judges whose reputations were deemed by us as flawed and troubled," she said.
"Out of those 25 troubled judges, eight of them are included on the list submitted to the House.
"However, those eight judges have not committed any serious ethical violations in the past like their fellow peers. So, I can say that this candidate list is quite good," she added.
Illian, however, refused to reveal the judges' names publicly.
"That could cost us a defamation charge," she said.
Illian also refused to reveal the names of candidates that ICW thought deserved to be appointed as Supreme Court judges.
"ICW is not in a position to endorse any name. However, we do hope that House legislators will prioritize public interest rather than their political needs," she said.
The Supreme Court is the top judiciary court in the country's judicial system and also supervises district courts in the regions.
The Supreme Court is also authorized to conduct a judicial review of any regulation in the country's judicial law.
Currently, the Supreme Court has 31 judges based on a data from its official websites.
Busyro recently said the Supreme Court had a lot of "rotten" justices that needed to be replaced immediately.
Based on the Judiciary Commission's records, he said, the judges had made questionable rulings by freeing defendants deemed by the public to be graft perpetrators.
