T

he recent arrest of a Supreme Court (MA) official for allegedly accepting bribes has not only exposed possible rampant corruption within the country'€™s highest judicial institution, but has sparked questions on its ongoing bureaucratic reform.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) apprehended court official Andri Tristianto Sutrisna on Saturday accepting Rp 400 million to delay the sentence of a graft convict.

The case came more than a decade after the Supreme Court started judicial reform in the early 2000s, which involved civil society groups and aimed to improve the integrity and professionalism of the country'€™s judicial system.

Critics said the country'€™s highest court'€™s resistance to external oversight, formally conducted by the Judicial Commission (KY), partly caused the failure.

KY deputy head Farid Wadji said his office would keep watch on the Supreme Court while involving wider public participation, including universities and civil society.

'€œPeople must know [the importance of their participation in monitoring courts] and must [actively] partake in efforts from the beginning to the end [of trials],'€ Farid said.

In an apparent effort to weaken KY authorities, a number of Supreme Court justices and one clerk won in October a judicial review petition to scrap the commission'€™s role to select judges for district courts, religious courts and state administrative courts.

The ruling allowed the Supreme Court to select judges without being accountable to other state bodies and left the KY with only the authority to monitor judges and help maintain their credibility.

Farid said the court'€™s resistance to external monitoring by his office was either due to the culture of the organization or personal backgrounds.

Muhammad Isnur, legal activist and lawyer at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), said the KY'€™s efforts would likely be useless without strong commitment from the court itself.

'€œI can still see reluctance to external oversight,'€ Isnur said on Tuesday. '€œFor example, we once demanded an open trial for a judicial review case. But [the court] rejected it.'€

Choky Ramadhan from the University of Indonesia'€™s Judicial Watch Society (MAPPI), whose institution has been involved in the reform, said poor implementation had caused a number of internal regulations aimed at improving transparency, such as those on public information and one-day publishing of rulings, to become merely paper tigers.

'€œThey must set clear guidelines and better indicators for the punishments and rewards for each reform measure,'€ Choky said.

Supreme Court spokesman Suhadi, however, stopped short of commenting on the implementation rates of the ongoing judicial reforms, but said the Supreme Court had indeed conducted a number of efforts.

'€œWe have made reform in the judiciary, such as in terms of human resources capacity and the one-day publishing mechanism,'€ he said.

Salary levels are among the elements many believe have triggered corrupt practices in the judicial system. In recent years, many people, including Supreme Court chief justice Hatta Ali and former KY commissioners, have called for increases in justices'€™ salaries to around Rp 200 million per month to avoid the temptation of bribery.

Suhadi denied the KY'€™s allegations, saying his office '€œalways welcomed external monitoring measures by the Judicial Commission in terms of judges'€™ code of ethics'€.