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akarta: A coalition of NGOs called on the Supreme Court (MA) on Friday to overhaul the nation’s judiciary at every level and to imprison all convicts immediately.

Forty-nine people who were previously sentenced to prison for corruption remain free, according to the coalition.

“Out of the 49, 25 have fled overseas while the other 24 are still free,” coalition spokesman Emerson Yuntho of the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said.

The Attorney General’s Office attributed the delays in incarcerating the convicts to courts’ tardiness in providing required materials, Emerson said.

Emerson cited the example of corruption in a power plant procurement project in Jambi in 2004 involving Democratic Party lawmaker Asad Syam.

Although Asad was sentenced to four years in prison in 2008, the copy of the verdict needed to detain Asad was not delivered to officials until a year after his conviction.

Similarly, the court still had not received a copy of the verdict in the case of former TVRI director Sumita Tobing, who was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment in April for corruption involving a procurement project at the state-owned television station.

The coalition urged the MA to sentence corruption convicts to prison for the maximum period specified by the 1999 Corruption Law.