6 - POLITICS, CORRUPTION AND THE COURTS

Summary

The experience of many post-authoritarian regimes suggests that judicial reform usually faces huge obstacles and cannot be achieved quickly. The courts had been integral components of the authoritarian regime with the role of serving its needs. Among their main functions were the provision of a cover of legitimacy for political repression while ensuring that regime leaders and their supporters enjoyed a large degree of impunity from the working of the law. Political oversight of the courts was the norm and most judges absorbed the values of the system. In many countries, the “justice sector”, including judges, prosecutors and police, was no different to the rest of the bureaucracy in that it was poorly paid and characterized by pervasive corruption.

Although the fall of the New Order opened the way to substantial democratic reforms, reform of the courts proved difficult, as indicated especially by their initial failure to tackle ubiquitous corruption that was increasingly exposed in the new democratic environment. In addition to the demand for democracy, one of the main slogans of the post-1998 reform movement called for the end of “KKN” (Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme: Corruption, Collusion, Nepotism). As we shall see, very little was attempted during the early post-authoritarian years to curb corruption. Soeharto's centralized network was partly dismantled, but its fragmented remnants formed their own networks around sections of the bureaucracy, the newly liberated political parties and regional governments. Much of the post-1998 political and economic elite, therefore, had been deeply involved in the practices of the Soeharto regime and had no enthusiasm for a campaign against KKN.

It could hardly be expected, in these circumstances, that the courts would reform themselves. The courts during the New Order had never been insulated from the corruption of the regime and the majority of judges had been integrated quite comfortably into the system. Of course, some judges had preserved their integrity under authoritarian rule and others, even if they had succumbed to the pressures of the past, at least aspired to restore public respect for the judiciary in the new circumstances. The critical impetus for judicial reform, however, had to come from outside the judiciary itself from freely elected governments and legislatures, as well as the press and NGOs, backed by public opinion.