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ince its establishment in 2005, the Judicial Commission has had most of its recommendations ignored by the Supreme Court, in what could be seen as an attempt by the latter to resist reforms.

The commission, which was set up to oversee the judiciary, is hoping that the judge tenure bill, slated to be deliberated by the House of Representatives’ legal affairs commission in the near future, would change the situation.

To be fair, the Supreme Court has made efforts to reform itself, but it has yet to produce substantial results, with several judges recently convicted of corruption.

The Commission, according to its spokesman Farid Wajdi, is now pushing for the inclusion of the “shared responsibility” concept in the bill, which would allow it to become involved in the process of recruiting, promoting, assessing and monitoring lower court judges.

Wajdi claimed the current draft bill already accommodated about 60 percent of the Commission’s proposals for stronger checks and balances in the judiciary.

The 2009 law on judicial powers, which the court says highlights the importance of judicial independence, has long been used by the Supreme Court to block the Commission’s reform efforts. Some countries, like Austria, Belgium, France and Germany, already recognize the shared responsibility concept, as stated in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) 2011 resource guide on strengthening judicial integrity and capacity.

These countries involve various entities, to different degrees, such as the heads of courts, judicial councils, ad hoc agencies, ministers of justice and parliamentary commissions, in the decision-making process regarding judges, including recruitment and retirement. France and the Netherlands follow a similar approach.

“The best practice we can learn from them is that their supreme courts focus on handling cases only”, said Muhammad Ilham from the Commission’s analysis unit.

“Twelve years should have been enough for [the Supreme Court to conduct] the reform,” he added.

There were around 7,000 judges of various lower courts across the nation last year who had to handle about 4.6 million cases, including around 113,000 carry-over cases from 2014. Although more than 80 percent of those cases were light offenses such as traffic violations, their number kept increasing.

Despite the piling cases, the number of judges has declined, because some have retired and there was no recruitment of lower-level judges in the past six years. The last time the court recruited lower court judges was in 2010, with 210 personnel taken on.

The main reason for the hiatus is that the revision of the judicial powers law introduced a provision that classifies judges as state officials, leaving personnel expenditure for potential new judges in limbo, Supreme Court justice Suhadi said recently.

The Judicial Commission also expected the bill to include a provision limiting a Supreme Court justice’s term in office to five years, with possible extension every five years after an evaluation by the Commission and approval from the House.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly expressed strong opposition to the plan, saying Indonesia should learn from other countries that did not limit judges’ tenures.

The new efforts to reform the judiciary coincide with the government’s plan to devise a set of policies for judicial reform.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is expected to reform the judiciary as soon as possible to attract investment, as the poor quality of judicial processes in the country has long been a deterrent to investors.

The World Bank’s 2016 Ease of Doing Business report shows the country scoring just 6.5 points on the quality of judicial process index — which ranges from 0 to 18 points, with higher values indicating more efficient judicial processes. Indonesia lags behind some of its neighbors, like Malaysia and Singapore, which scored 12 and 15.5 points, respectively.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, however, declined to comment on the Commission’s agenda, saying it was better to wait until the House deliberated the bill.