The panel of three judges at the Central Jakarta District Court -- Saifuddin Zuhri, Duta Baskara and Tuty Haryati -- have postponed the ruling eight times in the past four months, the most recent being last Thursday when they pushed the schedule to Thursday this week.

The citizen lawsuit is the first of its kind aiming to hold authorities accountable for air pollution in the country. It was filed in July 2019 by 32 residents of Greater Jakarta against seven public officials: the President, the environment minister, the health minister, the home minister and the governors of Jakarta, Banten and West Java. The plaintiffs demanded they devised policies to improve air quality in Jakarta.

The ruling was originally scheduled for May 20 after plaintiffs and respondents presented their closing arguments on April 21. But this was postponed for two weeks, with judges saying that the documents from the plaintiffs and defendants for cross-examination were incomplete.

Ever since, the bench has continuously rescheduled the ruling on short notice for various reasons, according to the lawyers, from the death of a judge’s family member, a judge being infected with coronavirus to the judges needing extra time to read through all the documents they had received to reach a verdict.

The lawyers said the repeated delays showed how the judges were unprofessional in handling the case.

“It seems that the judges think that the right to clean air is not urgent. This is sad," one of the lawyers, Ayu Eza Tiara from the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta), said recently.

Read also: Jakartans continue to hold their breath for court ruling in air pollution case

Lawyer Jeanny Sirait said the plaintiffs had a right to a timely trial. Citing a 2014 Supreme Court circular, she said judges at district courts had five months to reach and read their verdict after plaintiffs and respondents presented their closing arguments.

In the case of the air pollution lawsuit, both sides made their closing arguments on April 21.

“It’s understandable if there were some special conditions that warrant a delay of the ruling. However, delays that last more than three months like this should not be a norm,” Jeanny said.

The case hearings had also been plagued with delays, with representatives of the Banten administration failing to attend several times. Mediation meetings between the plaintiffs and the defendants failed to lead to an agreement, pushing the lawsuit into the realm of the court.

Another lawyer, Alghiffari Aqsa, suspected there were external factors that led to the delays. He did not elaborate on his statement.

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Yuyun Ismawati of the environmental NGO Nexus4 Foundation, and one of the plaintiffs said a delayed ruling meant not only denying environmental justice but also delaying efforts to improve air quality. She said uncontrolled dirty air posed health risks to children and people vulnerable to respiratory issues.

“The situation will only get worse if the government does not enact pro-public health policies [due to the postponed air pollution ruling],” she said.

The lawyers mailed the report against the judges on Aug. 27, but a commission spokesperson said its case tracking platform had yet to record any such complaint submitted in the system, as of Tuesday evening, while a spokesperson from the court was not immediately available for comment.