A letter to the president-elect, former furniture salesman

A letter to the president-elect, former furniture salesman (Part 1 of 2) Binziad Kadafi  ;   The writer worked for the National Legal Reform Program (2008-2011) in Jakarta and formerly worked as legal researcher at the Indonesian Center for Law and Policy Studies (PSHK) and the KPK

JAKARTA POST, 15 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

Dear Pak Jokowi, congratulations on your election. It is a glorious credit to democracy that a citizen from a family of carpenters can become president of the world’s fourth largest nation. It is about these different worlds, the big and the small, that we are writing to you about. Now, being a president, you will live in a palace and fly in helicopters. US President Barack Obama will charm you with stories about nasi goreng (fried rice), and when you go on the umrah (minor pilgrimage), you will surely get a “Double Plus” package. Everyone will be your friend, your best friend, bringing big words and big plans. But actually, most people, many of whom voted for you, live in simple houses, become stuck in traffic and mostly rely on friends and family for help. The contrasting worlds of the palace and of the streets also exist in law and corruption. On the one hand there is the world of “big justice”, with big concepts and slogans such as “state of law”, “wipe out corruption”, big institutions and important people. And then there is the world of small justice, common and petty corruption, acting as a constant burden on the everyday life of the Indonesian citizen. Big justice matters. After all, the Constitutional Court affirmed the outcome of the elections. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the corruption courts handle big cases. These are important, because they represent aspirational values, they constitute moral benchmarks for all citizens and they punish bad behavior. The Supreme Court and Judicial Commission help shape the future of justice. So, big justice is very important. But how does all this translate into small justice for the Indonesian citizen? That is not so clear. Let us look at some examples. Take the administrative courts, the most important courts perhaps for citizens to seek redress against the government. The administrative courts are typical big justice: there are 28 courts, plus four appeal courts and 300 judges (plus 860 support staff and its own director general). But actually, this big system delivers only 1,704 decisions every year, according to last year’s Supreme Court annual report. That is the total number for the entire country. It is tiny. And this is the number of cases filed in a nation of over 250 million citizens. It is a lot of institutions, judges and staff and budget to handle this tiny number of cases. Do you think this number is so small because Indonesians have no complaints against the bureaucracy? Is it because everything works well? The same is going on with the labor courts. There are 33 labor courts in Indonesia. But how much justice do these actually to the citizens? Only 749 cases were filed last year; another minuscule figure. What might be the reason? Is it because Indonesian workers are all happy and satisfied, their salaries paid on time, and if they are dismissed, everything is in order, their severance pay properly paid? As regards corruption cases, the KPK, the large police apparatus, the prosecutors and the corruption courts (all 33 of them) completed 1,162 cases last year. Many of these were large and important cases. They are difficult, and it is great that the corruptors have been brought to justice. But how about the thousands of small cases which affect citizens in their everyday lives? In what way do these big cases change the livelihood of the average citizen? Perhaps the most telling figure on small justice is litigation that is truly voluntary, i.e. where Indonesians go to court totally of their own free choice to secure their individual rights (contractual default, tort, etc.). Only 17,529 contentious civil disputes were filed in 2008 for the whole of Indonesia, and 17,258 in 2013. All 230 million Indonesians in 2008 filed about as many voluntary cases in the Indonesian courts as a single magistrate in another country would handle in a year. And this tiny trickle of voluntary cases was filed before the 331 (now 352) district courts. No wonder a fair share of them report not getting any cases at all for the entire year — 20 courts in 2008, according to official figures. What these figures show, Mr. President-elect, is when Indonesian citizens have a choice, a real choice, they do not go to the state to find justice. We have a situation in which big justice gets a lot of attention, has many institutions, a lot of staff, a lot of money, a lot of donor attention, but it does not deliver small justice yet to the people. ●