T

he new members of the Prosecutors Commission are pledging to improve the monitoring of prosecutors and of the performance of the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO).

The nine new members of the commission, a body tasked with keeping an eye on the AGO, were inaugurated by President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo on Thursday at the State Palace.

Sumarno, the commission'€™s new chairman, a former AGO special staffer for special crimes, said the commission would focus on improving the AGO'€™s performance, including by designing a better monitoring mechanism.

'€œWe will carry out programs that have been designed by our predecessors,'€ said Sumarno after the inauguration ceremony.

The commission consists of nine members, six of whom were selected by the public and three by the government. The six commissioners are Erna Ratnaningsih, a lecturer who is also a former head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) and an activist at the Legal Aid Foundation of Indonesian Women'€™s for Justice (LBH Apik), Ferdinand Andi Lolo, a criminology lecturer at the University of Indonesia, Barita Hamonangan Simanjuntak, a lecturer, two lawyers Indro Sugiarto and Yuni Arta Manalu and a former professional staff member of the Batang regency in Central Java, Pultoni.

The three remaining commissioners are Chairman Sumarno, plus Yuswa Kusuma AB, who was formerly on the AGO'€™s special staff on civil and state administrative law, as well as Sumarno'€™s predecessor at the West Java Prosecutors Office, and Tudjo Pramono, who was previously the secretary for the Air Force'€™s legal unit and the assistant of the deputy for human rights promotion and protection at the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister.

Indro said that the commissioners would step up their monitoring to root out case brokers, which had been singled out by President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo as one of serious problems affecting the AGO.

'€œIt will be our main task,'€ Indro said.

Other than warning prosecutors against naming suspects only to extort money out of them, Jokowi also called on the AGO to do its best to conduct an internal reform, including by eradicating case brokerage problems.

The commission, Indro said, also aimed to improve the management of the AGO and the quality of its prosecutors, particularly as they were now facing bigger challenges amid a number of pretrial cases seeking to turn the tables against investigations conducted by law enforcers.

Just recently, the former president director of state electricity firm PLN, Dahlan Iskan, won a pretrial motion related to his corruption charges that had been imposed by the Jakarta Prosecutor'€™s Office.

'€œPretrial cases are an impetus for the commission to improve the education of the prosecutors so that they are more professional. Prosecutors should not lag behind in the latest judicial development,'€ he added.

Attorney General M. Prasetyo said he hoped on the new commissioners could help improve the performance of his institution.

'€œWe hope they can give us input on things we need to improve,'€ he said, adding that he would make room for the commission to monitor prosecutors, including those who were believed to be cases brokers.

Prasetyo also pledged that he would take the commission'€™s recommendations seriously.

Tumpak Hatorangan Panggabean, the head of the team that oversaw the selection process of the six commission members between February and January, said the team hoped '€œthe commission delivers its best performance'€.

'€œWe want to see reform [in the AGO],'€ he said.

Tumpak said the line-up of the commission was decided solely by the President.

Tumpak said he did not know the reason why the government picked Sumarno as the commission'€™s new chairman. '€œI believe the government considered the need to have a former prosecutor in the post,'€
he added.