Do you like puzzles? If you do, you’ll love conundrums.

According to the dictionary, “conundrum” can mean two things: “a question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer; a riddle” or, “a confusing and difficult problem or question”.

Indonesia, I think, is a conundrum country par excellence, ranging from the weird (having sex in graveyards for spiritual and material gain), ironic (hardliners shouting “God is Great” while bashing people), funny (wearing woolly hats in the scorching sun), to the frustrating (entrenched corruption and failing reform).

Recently, I came across a whopper of a legal conundrum: the overturning of spiritual guru Anand Krishna’s acquittal on sexual abuse charges by the South Jakarta Court. On Aug. 2 the Supreme Court (MA) granted the cassation appeal filed by prosecutors calling for the verdict to be overturned, and Anand Krishna was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment.

Huh? Isn’t it a universal principle that when a person is acquitted, he or she is usually acquitted forever? Yes, even in Indonesia! Article 244 of Indonesia’s Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP) states that appeals cannot be brought to the Supreme Court if the defendant has been declared innocent by a lower court.

So how did this legal back-flip happen? It seems the prosecutors disregarded the KUHAP, and took legal refuge in a decision of the justice minister from 1983 that stated that acquittals by a lower court could be challenged in the Supreme Court “on the basis of the situation and conditions, for law, justice and truth”.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but how can a Ministerial Decree have greater legal weight than a formalized law?

From the start it seemed like the case might have been trumped up to discredit Anand and his teachings of peace and pluralism (see “When prosecution becomes persecution”, The Jakarta Post, April 21, 2011). The fact that when all was said and done, legally speaking, the prosecutors just kept on going, makes it look suspiciously like vexatious litigation to me.

And what is vexatious litigation you may ask? It’s a legal action brought solely to harass or subdue an adversary and is considered an abuse of the judicial process.

Granted, abuse of the legal system is a common conundrum in Indonesia — more the rule than the exception, really. No one, for example, can escape the grim irony that two anti-corruption judges were caught recently red-handed accepting bribes (see “Govt considers shutting down corruption courts in regions”, The Jakarta Post, Aug. 21). There’s a widespread belief that all judges are corrupt. But how can the MA, the highest judicial authority in the land, be part of it?

Well, don’t forget most MA judges are sourced from the wider pool of judges in Indonesia whose quality, credibility and integrity are questionable. According to Yahdil Abdi Harahap, member of the House of Representatives’ Commission III on legal affairs, of the 7,500 judges in Indonesia, only about a dozen are of good character. The public perception of judges in Indonesia is so bad that the word hakim (judge) is considered an acronym for Hubungi Aku Kalau Ingin Menang (contact me if you want to win).

It is also a serious worry that one of the panel members who granted the cassation appeal overturning Anand’s acquittal is a man who had already made many controversial decisions before this one. It was he, for example, who gave a four-month jail sentence to Rasminah, the grandma who allegedly stole six plates. He was also on the Supreme Court panel that overturned the popular acquittal of Prita Mulyasari, the housewife who complained about the poor medical treatment she received from Omni Hospital (see “Supreme Court overturns acquittal of housewife Prita”, The Jakarta Post, July 9, 2011).

In Anand’s case, the process was also shockingly sloppy: 10 pages of the decision of another of the judges on the Supreme Court panel seem to have been copied and pasted from someone else’s case in Bandung!

All this might be hilarious if it didn’t imply what could become tragic consequences for Anand. “I have vowed to fight this to the last drop of my blood”, he has said. He may have to.

Sexual abuse or rape cases are invariably conundrums, especially when they involve well-known and otherwise respected people. In the end it becomes a case of “he said, she said”, with the supporters of each rallying behind them.

Feminists and women’s groups tend to favor the “victim”. For example, the National Commission on Violence Against Women hailed the overturning of Anand’s acquittal as being “an important legal breakthrough”.

They take this (ideological) stand simply because they say “It’s not easy for a victim to recount the experience of sexual harassment or abuse, especially when it involves a public figure”.

I can understand their stance (guilty until proven innocent), because I know of some cases of sexual harassment that definitely did take place but the perpetrators got off virtually scot-free. And it’s true that male public figures have a kind of immunity, especially in a patriarchal society like ours.

But what about the rule of law? I’m a feminist, but I also believe in pursuing proper legal procedures.

Aaargh! What a conundrum that puts me in! And Indonesia too, sad to say.

The writer (juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author of State Ibuism.

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