T

he Supreme Court must be cautious in selecting the next ad hoc judges for corruption courts, as most applicants were mediocre or unqualified, antigraft watchdogs said.

Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Aradila Caesar said recently the team recommended three candidates to the court, out of 62 evaluated. There are 23 more candidates that the team has not yet evaluated.

“Only three of them are qualified to be judges for a corruption court. They are from Padang, Medan and Jakarta,” he said, adding that the other 49 candidates were ineligible and 10 were mediocre.

The evaluations are based on the candidates’ integrity, independence and competence, all of which have sub-indicators.

Aradilla said that integrity meant the candidates have never been defense lawyers for graft convicts, while competence refers to the requirement of at least 15 years of experience in a relevant field. Independence requires candidates to not have affiliated with any political party in the last 10 years.

“However, some of the candidates have been affiliated [with political parties] defending graft convicts and are not proficient in handling corruption cases,” Aradilla said without naming names.

Some of the candidates are known to be party-affiliated, including a former councilor in Padang and a legislative candidate in Banten.

“We do not recommend party-affiliated candidates because they are likely to take sides when handling corruption cases,” Aradilla said.

University of Indonesia’s Judicial Watch Society (MAPPI) researcher Muhammad Rizaldi said the applicants also come from various backgrounds, some of which are irrelevant to the judge position. Most of them are legal advocates, the fittest candidates for the job, while there are 14 former judges, eight civil servants, six secretary judges, five private employees and four Army retirees.

“There are bank officers and employees of state-owned companies like PT Pos Indonesia,” he said, adding that some were officers of human resources and marketing departments.

Rizaldi said certain backgrounds indicate that candidates are not experts and only seek the opportunity to be a judge. “We have asked the court only to accept the candidates for the vital jobs, only because of a lack of human resources,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s selection team, chaired by Justice Artidjo Alkostar, had selected 85 applicants from a pool of 160 who underwent assessment tests and interviews on Wednesday. The court did not set a specific target on how many judges it would accept. Last year, it accepted 11 judges for the corruption court.

Rizaldi said the court had to more carefully sort out the candidates as in the past four years, seven corruption court judges have been caught red-handed by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Some of the judges caught include Kartini Marpaung and Pragsono from the Semarang Corruption Court, Heru Subandono from the Pontianak Corruption Court, Ramlan Comel from the Bandung Corruption Court and, most recently, Janner Purba, head of the Bengkulu Corruption Court.

However, the guilty judges were only sentenced for relatively short periods of no more than three years.

Judicial Commission deputy chairwoman Sukma Violetta said the Supreme Court had to revise the selection tests to get the most qualified candidates.

“Aside from multiple choice questions and essays, [the court] also needs to give decision making tests to the candidates,” she said.

KPK deputy chairman Saut Situmorang said the court has to increase its internal supervision of the candidates to prevent possible wrongdoings at corruption courts.

“A judge with integrity could also corrupt because of weak internal supervision,” he said on Saturday as quoted by kompas.com. (adt)