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Adultery second-most common ethics breach
Bribery cases implicating judges have repeatedly put the country’s judiciary in the spotlight, raising concern about impartiality for years
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Bribery cases implicating judges have repeatedly put the country’s judiciary in the spotlight, raising concern about impartiality for years. What is less known, however, is that adultery is the second-most common type of ethics violation tainting the courts of law.
An analysis of cases handled by a joint ethics panel of the Judicial Commission (KY) and the Supreme Court (MA) reveals that penalties have been handed down to a total of 48 judges since 2009, which includes 16 cases of adultery and 23 gratuity cases. Another five cases involve disciplinary problems, three others drug abuse and one concerns document forgery.
Many of the extramarital affairs involved judges working at courts far from their families, the commission has found.
Abdul Rahman, a 33-year-old judge at a religious court in Labuha in North Maluku, is the latest judge to be dismissed, after the ethics panel on Tuesday found that he had breached the code of ethics by having an extramarital affair.
Abdul was called before the ethics hearing after his then wife, identified only as R, had filed a report against her husband with the commission in February, because of her suspicions that Abdul was having an affair with SD, a widow living near his house in Labuha, following Abdul’s transfer to Labuha.
“The aggravating factor is that the action has lowered the dignity of both the judge profession and the judiciary, because the case has gained the attention of the locals and officials in North Maluku,” KY commissioner Jaja Ahmad Jayus, who is also a member of the ethics panel, said in the verdict.
The panel said a witness had revealed that the former couple’s marriage had been drifting apart since 2015, when Abdul was transferred to Labuha while R, who is also a judge, was living in Wamena, Papua. Abdul was able to have R moved to Labuha in late 2016, but by that point their marriage had deteriorated due to a lack of communication.
Abdul eventually married SD in June, after the divorce he had filed with R was finalized in May, according to his defense statement. At the time of the wedding, the KY was still investigating the case.
In his defense, Abdul said the breaking of his marriage with R was not related to SD’s divorce, which had been brought to court in 2016.
Many of the cases of adultery handled by the KY involve judges who were stationed at courts far from their homes and did not have their families with them, Jaja said after the hearing.
Ethics breaches of extramarital affairs have also been found to occur between judges. In a case in 2014, for instance, two judges at a lower court in Jambi, Elsadela and Mastuhi, were dismissed after they, each married to someone else, were found to be engaged in an office romance.
The affair reportedly began with Elsadela seeking advice from Mastuhi on a possible divorce, he himself being a religious court judge hearing divorce cases.
In another case that same year, the ethics panel banned judge M. Reza Latuconsina of the Ternate District Court from hearing cases for two years after he was found to have had an extramarital relation with a clerk working at the same court.
In 2013, the joint panel handed down penalties to seven judges, four of whom had been involved in adultery.
The problems prompted Supreme Court justice Hatta Ali to issue a decree in February stipulating that, among other things, the home of a judge’s family should be taken into account in the rotation of judges, in a move that suggests that extramarital affairs continue to pose a challenge for judges.
“The [new] Supreme Court judge rotation procedures already stipulate that families of judges should be taken into account, but there are still judges who live apart from their families,” Jaja said.
Supreme Court spokesperson Abdullah was more optimistic about the new rotation procedures, saying that there would “hopefully be no more such [extramarital affair] cases in the future.”
