It has been a busy period for the Constitutional Court’s (MK) ethics council.

After concluding its task to look into former justice Patrialis Akbar, who was fired in late January following his gaining of the status of a corruption suspect, the council has been busy investigating alleged ethics violations by half of the remaining eight justices — including chief justice Arief Hidayat — for not updating their annual wealth reports with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) as required by the Corruption Law.

The court was only weeks away from beginning to conduct hearings on 49 regional election disputes when the news about the justices’ alleged negligence broke, further harming public confidence in the court, which was already hit hard by the KPK’s arrest of Patrialis,

Ethics council chairman Abdul Mukhtie Fadjar, also a former Constitutional Court justice, said Thursday the council had questioned the reported justices on Wednesday, saying “some of them claimed to have updated” their wealth report documents (LHKPN), but “the KPK has yet to make them available to the public”.

“We give them one week [to complete the documents],” Abdul said.

Earlier, three civil society organizations — Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), the Indonesian Budget Center (IBC) and the Indonesian Legal Aid Union (PBHI) — grouped under the “Coalition to Save the MK” reported to the council that Arief and fellow justices Anwar Usman, Aswanto and Suhartoyo had failed to file their latest wealth reports.

Arief had yet to update his LHKPN after assuming his current position in 2015 to replace graft convict Akil Mochtar, while Anwar, a former career justice at the Supreme Court, had yet to submit his latest wealth report after being appointed as Constitutional Court justice in 2011 and after being promoted to his current position in 2015, according to the coalition.

The coalition also reported that Aswanto and Suhartoyo had yet to submit their latest wealth reports after being appointed as Constitutional Court justices in 2014 and in 2015, respectively.

Suhartoyo claimed he had reported “all documents” to the ethics council and that he was preparing his latest LHKPN when “the media started to publish reports” on the alleged ethical violations following a statement by KPK spokesperson Febri Diansyah saying that some of the justices had yet to report their LHKPN.

Arief, meanwhile, only said “just ask the ethics council” when asked by The Jakarta Post about the matter. He also argued that the obligation for state officials to report their LKPN was still a “debatable subject”.

Separately, Todung Mulya Lubis, a member of the selection committee to choose a new justice to replace Patrialis, said only half of the 45 applicants met the formal requirements set by the committee.

The committee will announce the candidates who passed the administrative phase on Friday and will seek input from the public and a number of agencies to scrutinize the track records of the candidates.

Veri Junaidi, the chairman of judiciary watchdog KoDe Inisiatif, said the current selection process had provided impetus for the Court to improve public perception of the institution, which had been “badly damaged”.