However, Guntur was let off with a warning from the council, setting off a wave of criticism.

The ethics council convened on Monday after concluding its examination of irregularities surrounding the top court’s ruling on the 2020 Constitutional Court Law, which governs the rights of the nine justices of the bench.

The council was formed on Jan. 30, led by former justice I Dewa Gede Palguna and accompanied by Constitutional Court Justice Enny Nurbaningsih and Sudjito, a law professor from Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University, who was a member of a previous court ethics council.

The irregularities revolve around a discrepancy between the ruling that was read aloud in the final hearing and the official copy of it that was uploaded to the court’s website. It centers on the use of the term “therefore” in the court’s opinion, read out in November by Justice Saldi Isra, which differed from the phrase “in the future” that appeared in the subsequent official copy of the ruling online.

According to the hearing on Monday, the ethics council found that Guntur had crossed out the word “therefore” and replaced it with “in the future”, communicating this change with court clerk Muhidin at 3:24 p.m., only four minutes before Saldi began reading the court’s opinion.

Muhidin told Justice Arief Hidayat about the proposed change in the ruling but not the other justices on the bench, including Saldi, who was the final drafter of the ruling.

Palguna said the council concluded that there was no agreement among the court justices on the proposed change by Guntur.

“If it is said that there was an agreement [among the bench] then it was an odd agreement, because, if the phrase ‘therefore’ was replaced with ‘in the future’, then the court opinion that was built on previous statements would have become incoherent,” he said.

Ethics hearing decision. (Ethics hearing/JP/Nur Janti/Swi Handono)

The ethics council head noted that Guntur’s act came amid a public debate about the dismissal of Aswanto, whom Guntur eventually replaced. Palguna said this could be seen as a way for Guntur to save himself from scrutiny over Aswanto’s dismissal and his own appointment.

However, the council decided only to issue Guntur a written warning for his unethical conduct.

In response to the ethics council’s decision, case petitioner Zico Leonard told the press that merely issuing Guntur with a warning letter was too lenient a decision. Zico was the first to flag the discrepancy between the version read in the hearing and the official copy that came out later on.

He proclaimed that the House of Representatives should be ashamed of its decision to appoint Guntur to the bench of a top court, as he had evidently committed a breach of ethics.

“I think [this decision] is disappointing, and it should also be a lesson for all parties, especially the House, because the person they appointed to replace former justice Aswanto committed an ethics violation only hours after being appointed,” he said in Jakarta on Monday.

The discrepancy between the two versions of the ruling was first flagged by Zico in late January.

Zico, whose petition was rejected, called for sitting justices to be protected from removal or replacement for reasons other than those enumerated in the law, such as death, criminal conviction or breach of ethics.

He filed the petition in October 2022, not long after the House voted to dismiss justice Aswanto despite major doubts over its authority to do so.

The House was accused of legislative overreach, and Aswanto’s removal was widely seen as being politically motivated. Aswanto was notable for his role in invalidating the government’s flagship 2020 Job Creation Law, which angered the pro-government majority in the legislature.

Guntur was appointed by the House to replace Aswanto and took an oath witnessed by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in a ceremony at the State Palace just hours before the court read out the ruling on Zico’s petition.