A

team overseeing the selection of Judicial Commission (KY) commissioners excluded incumbent KY chairman Suparman Marzuki from its list of seven final candidates submitted to President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo on Thursday.

Suparman, along with KY commissioner Taufiqurrahman Syahuri, was recently named a suspect in a case of defamation against judge Sarpin Rizaldi.

Team member Asep Rahmat Fajar, a former KY spokesman, confirmed that the team had taken Suparman'€™s status into consideration when picking its final seven.

'€œWe discussed [Suparman'€™s] status before making the decision, but the parameters included all aspects,'€ Asep said.

Suparman'€™s status stems from his and Taufiqurrahman'€™s criticism of Sarpin'€™s decision to null the suspect status of Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan in a pretrial hearing.

The two KY commissioners were charged by the police just days after the KY issued a recommendation to the Supreme Court to suspend Sarpin for six months for breaching the judges'€™ code of ethics in Budi'€™s case.

Asep also argued that the seven chosen were all better candidates than Suparman.

'€œThe academic group [to which Suparman belonged] was a tough competition, and Harjono and Wiwiek were the winners,'€ Asep said, referring to former Constitutional Court justice Harjono and Wiwiek Awiati, a law lecturer at the University of Indonesia and an advisor to the Supreme Court'€™s reform team.

The final list also includes former military judge Joko Sasmito, who presided over a 2013 trial that ending with the sentencing of three members of the Army'€™s Special Forces (Kopassus) to six to 11 years in prison for murder.

'€œTrack records were, without doubt, a key factor in determining the selection,'€ selection team head Harkristuti Harkrisnowo told a press conference at the State Palace on Thursday.

According to Harkristuti, the team, which accepted input from civil society groups and the public, as well as using official records from a number of state institutions, picked the seven names based on the five criteria of integrity, competence, leadership, independence and experience.

The team selected the seven from 18 short-listed candidates divided into four groups: academicians, former judges, legal practitioners and the public. Joko and former religious court judge Maradaman Harahap are former judges, while lawyers Farid Wajdi and Sumartoyo represent the legal practitioners'€™ group and Sukma Violetta, a former public attorney at the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) and former assistant to the Attorney General'€™s Office'€™s (AGO) reform team, represents the public.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) meanwhile deplored the team'€™s decision not to include Suparman on its final list. '€œIt is clear that the suspect status is mere persecution,'€ ICW researcher Aradila Caesar told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

'€œSuparman did well during his leadership, including the KY'€™s brave decision to condemn Sarpin'€™s breach of ethics. We think that the KY still needs Suparman to give leadership to the commission given that [all seven] are new faces,'€ Aradila said.