Without fanfare, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo launched a legal reform last month amid a storm of criticism over lingering poor law enforcement, weakening combat against corruption and an outdated legal system. Despite discrepancies, the move has triggered state institutions to begin cracking down on corruption. The Jakarta Post’s Nani Afrida and Pandaya take an in-depth look into the issue.

“We mean to lift this weak state by reforming the legal system and law enforcement. The state will protect the entire nation and give all citizens a sense of security”.

So say two tenets in Nawacita, or the nine-point agenda that Jokowi pledged on his presidential campaign trail in 2014. Two years into his five-year term last month, he launched his national legal system reform to prove he meant business.

Unlike the launch of the seemingly endless economic packages — there have been 13 of them so far this year — the “national legal system revitalization” package was quietly introduced. The supposedly historic event largely missed the media limelight. People became aware of it only after a police sting collared low-ranking officials with the Transportation Ministry for allegedly accepting grease money from a businessman.

Jokowi, whose ascending approval rating has hit 67 percent, according to one pollster, introduced the long due legal reform package amid criticism over poor law enforcement, a disoriented anticorruption campaign and his administration’s weak political will to resolve gross human rights abuses that remain a thorn on his side.

As a president with a business background, Jokowi, a former furniture businessman in his hometown of Surakarta, has shown more concern in matters related to trade, investment, licensing and bribery than legal development and human rights.

“The [legal reform] package is just too investment-oriented and offers no solutions to fundamental legal problems,” said Alvon Kurnia Palma, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI).

Despite his high approval rating thanks largely to the economic performance and political stability he has achieved, the law and human rights situation inherited from his predecessors remains in shambles.

For example, just to show how inefficient the legislation is, official statistics recorded that more than 60,200 regulations had been made by both central and regional governments between 2000 and 2015.

On law enforcement, the 2015 rule of law index placed Indonesia at 52nd place with a score of 0.52. On corruption, Indonesia has remained one of the worst in the world at 88th place. The prosecution rate is low. For instance, of last year’s 755 reported cases of corruption, only 156 were taken to court.

As though giving credence to his critics, all of the about 3,000 regional bylaws Jokowi scrapped this year were all about local economy. They were annulled because they contravened higher laws and discouraged investment. But thousands of other bylaws deemed discriminatory against minority groups remain in place.

What’s more, the public funds earmarked for legal aid for the poor have been kept to the minimum. In 2013, the pro-bono fund was Rp 50 billion (US$3.7 million) but today it has been slashed to Rp 18 billion.

“People’s right to obtain legal aid has been curtailed on the pretext of budget deficit and in favor of infrastructure development,” Alvon said.

The legal reform package also intends to address smuggling, which remains a headache for the authorities due to the limited resources to safeguard the vast archipelago. Especially worrying is the smuggling of drugs. Last year, the authorities handled 139 cases of narcotics smuggling. Equally serious is the smuggling of weapons for homegrown terror groups. Efforts to stop smuggling have been ineffective due to overlapping regulations, unrealistic policies and lenient punishments.

The chaos has created legal uncertainty. Rife corruption in the police force and judiciary, as surveys indicate, has sent public trust in law enforcers to the rock bottom. So the reform aims to build “culture of law”, empower law enforcers and reform legal instruments.

Priorities have been placed in five areas of priority: eradication of illegal levies and bribery, combating smuggling, acceleration of vehicle document processing, efficiency of stay permit issuance for foreigners and relocation of prisoners.

Particularly interesting is the new policy on the reform of the corrupt and overly crowded penitentiary system. The government will build special penitentiaries on outer islands for drug dealers, drug lords and terrorist convicts. Under the current system, which basically put prisoners of all crimes in the same facility, allows them to learn criminality from each other, making a deterrence effect unachievable.

Relocating penitentiaries to outer islands is expected to reduce overcapacity at prisons. Nationally, prisons have been designed to accommodate 119,000 convicts but in reality, they have been crammed with 202,000 criminals.

Illegal levies and bribery happen in all sectors but the combat will be focused on the public service, licensing, judicial “mafia” and the service industry — none of those have service standards.

If public service reform goes as planned, the notorious illegal levies that people have to pay when renewing vehicle documents or applying for driver’s licenses at police stations should stop.

 Probably to show that they have reformed, Jakarta police recently arrested a middle-ranking investigator, Adj. Comr. Brotoseno, for allegedly extorting Rp 3 billion from a businessman embroiled in a land acquisition dispute. The officer was formerly on loan to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) but was returned to the police force after he allegedly had an affair with Angelina Sondakh, a Democratic Party politician and former beauty queen who was then convicted by the Jakarta Corruption Court.

While advocates praise Jokowi’s legal reform efforts, critics pooh-pooh as superficial and lacking far-fetched strategies that Indonesia really needs to improve the legal system, which has long been neglected.

The drums of war that Jokowi is banging against illegal levies and bribery is widely seen as benefitting mostly businesspeople, who have fretted about red tape and lots of grease money when obtaining business licenses.

More substantial measures such as increasing civil servants’ salaries, taking preventative measures against corruption and stricter enforcement, are seen as more urgent than KPK and police stings, which have yet to show the desired results — deterring corruption.

 Human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis recalled that the development of the legal system had been virtually sidelined ever since the administration of first president Sukarno, who compromised it with his never-ending revolution. Then dictator Soeharto “ruled by law” to cling to power for 32 years. Now, Jokowi put it after the economy.

“He [Jokowi] should understand that economic development […] should go hand in hand with legal development. I think legal development and respect for human rights have received unfair treatment, like a stepchild in nation building.”

Today, 18 years after reformation began, Indonesia has yet to see rule of law in place because, as Todung points out, the political elites do not want it. The legal system has been gradually improved, but it allows the elites to remain above the law.

A classic problem that slips from the legal reform scheme is how to bolster the independency of the judiciary branch of government. “Never think again that police, prosecutors and judges are part of the executives. Their independency must be upheld,” Todung said.

 In recent years, the politicization of the judiciary system has been blamed for the criminalization of, say, KPK leaders targeting senior police officers.

Haris Azhar, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS), said with the seemingly progressive legal reform package Jokowi meant to “simplify” the unresolved legal and human rights issues.

With the package, Jokowi offered a sound legal framework for an agenda that is “funny but respectful” — a reform intended to improve the economy but largely ignoring the more fundamental legal reform and human rights promotion.

“Take the policy to stem bribery in the driver’s license application process. That is basically an economic policy because it benefits the automotive industry,” Haris said.

Lawmaker Nasir Djamil agrees legal reform should start from law enforcers, who have often bear the brunt of short budgets and an outdated legal system.

Nasir sees four major reasons as to why law enforcement should be reformed: Too many articles in the Criminal Code (KUHP) are ambiguous; supervision is slack; remunerations are low; and corruption is hard to crack because officers have strong esprit de corps.

Obviously, much is yet to be done to improve the situation. On the bright side, recent stings by the KPK and police show that government institutions have the will to address corruption.