T

he Constitutional Court needs to improve its performance in handling judicial review requests in order to curb potential misconduct, human rights watchdog Setara Institute has warned.

Ismail Hasani, the watchdog’s research director, said the longer it took for the court to process a request, the greater the opportunity for collusion between plaintiffs and justices.

He cited the bribery case implicating former justice Patrialis Akbar as an example. “The attempt to influence the court’s ruling [through bribery] in the case could happen again because the proceedings were too long,” Ismail said on Sunday as quoted by kompas.com.

Patrialis has been accused of accepting US$70,000 in bribes from businessman Basuki Hariman and his secretary Ng Fenny in connection with a request for a judicial review of the 2014 Farming and Animal Husbandry Law.

Setara recorded 38 requests that took more than a year to resolve in the 12 months up to August 2017, while 18 requests took around nine to 12 months.