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ewly appointed Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo should prove his ability to reform the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) by taking concrete action to resolve long-overdue cases that have been neglected by the institution.

The appointment of Prasetyo, a NasDem Party politician, to take over the position from Basrief Arief, has been criticized, with some questioning the former lawmaker'€™s autonomy in leading the legal institution that has been tainted with poor law enforcement.

The lack of thorough supervision in the country'€™s judiciary has meant that law enforcement institutions, including the AGO, have been unable to solve a number of cases on corruption and gross human rights violations.

A study by the Jakarta-based Indonesian Legal Roundtable (ILR), for example, in September this year, cited a lack of a supervisory mechanism as the reason why the Indonesian Law Enforcement Perception Index was at a level of 5.12 on a scale of one to 10.

The result showed a sluggish improvement on the ILR'€™s study last year, when the Indonesian Law Enforcement Perception Index reached 4.53.

According to the US-based World Justice Project, the Indonesian Rule of Law Index achieved only between 0.4 and 0.5 in 2012, from a scale of 0 to 1 in 2012.

'€œPak Prasetyo has a large responsibility to lead the AGO. He must prove he is a brave person, courageous enough to reform the institution and to be free of questionable interests, including from inside the AGO,'€ National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Roichatul Aswidah said recently.

Roichatul, who leads Komnas HAM'€™s team tasked with settling cases of past gross human rights abuses, highlighted Prasetyo'€™s significant role in determining the fate of such cases, which have been without any progress for more than 12 years due to technical bickering between Komnas HAM and the AGO.

'€œKomnas HAM would have preferred that President Joko [Jokowi] Widodo had appointed a person who was not affiliated to a political party, to avoid political interests becoming involved in efforts to solve cases of gross human rights violations, which are highly political,'€ said Roichatul.

'€œHowever, since Pak Prasetyo has officially taken over the job, we have no other choice but to work with him for the comprehensive solution of the seven cases of rights violations, in which the results of investigations were submitted to the AGO years ago,'€ she emphasized.

The unresolved cases consist of the 1989 Talangsari massacre; the enforced disappearances of anti-Soeharto activists in 1997 and 1998; the Trisakti University shootings; the Semanggi I and Semanggi II student shootings in 1998 and 1999; the mysterious killings of alleged criminals in the 1980s; the anticommunist massacres of 1965; and the various abuses that took place in Wasior and Wamena in Papua in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Anticorruption activists also called for Prasetyo to be an independent, credible attorney general to solve corruption cases, including those that may involve law enforcers.

'€œPoor law enforcement in the country is basically due to the poor performance of law enforcement institutions, including the AGO, which is caused by poor leadership, poor human resources management, poor case handling and poor supervision,'€ former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) acting head Mas Achmad Santosa said in a statement.

'€œThe government, especially Attorney General Prasetyo and other leading AGO officials, have to strengthen prosecuting organizations in these four aspects,'€ he highlighted.