Judicial Distrust : A Description of Institutional Collapse in Indonesia

 

                            Judicial Distrust : A Description of Institutional Collapse in Indonesia

                                                          By : Beckham Jufian Podung

 

             Law in Indonesia is currently in the public spotlight. Law in Indonesia is likened to a free fall to its lowest point. Such a view becomes a negative reinforcement of the existence of law in Indonesia. It could be happen because judicial power incluiding the institutional for law enforcement have been got distrust from public society, even though Judicial (court) is a place for justice seekers to found a real justice, trust it the part of an essential things if we are talk about law. Many people comes to court or policy to struggle for their rights, by Gustave radbruch there are 3 goals of law; first is about justice, second about utility and third about certainty. There are many chases in Indonesia which describes how the law enforcement officers has taken repressive actions. Not only that things, in Parigi, Central Sulawesi, there is a case where the police sleep with the suspect's child in exchange for the suspect who is the victim's parent to be released. Legal conditions like this basically reduce the level of public trust in the existence of the law itself. This is because our legal conditions are often weak and absurd in cases involving political elites and the ruling elite. 

            Conditions like this cannot be left alone, because trust is the most important element in the concept of a state, all state institutions around the world can carry out all their duties and responsibilities because they gain trust from the community as the holder of the highest sovereignty in a country, this is the principle of democracy, the principle where the legitimacy of the people is the most important instrument and this legitimacy is measured by the level of public trust. We don't want to end up like failed countries such as Somalia, where the phenomenon of distrust government occurs there, the people no longer want to follow government regulations, because the government has lost the trust of the people, as well as our judicial power, both the police, prosecutors and even the courts must continue maintain integrity, 

            If we look in the mirror from sebastian pompe's dissertation with the title "The Indonesian Supreme Court: A Study of Institutional Collapse” which examines the damage to our supreme court, even according to Daniel S. Lev. Shortly after the author's original dissertation was presented at the Faculty of Law, Leiden University and several copies reached Indonesia, the findings of the Supreme Court's misconduct shocked various interest groups in Jakarta. After being revised for publication purposes, a study of the history of Indonesian law and politics and some important discussions about how, and with what consequences, the State of Indonesia has changed over the last fifty years. Sebastian Pompe's research is only one of many problems that can be investigated regarding the breakdown of law enforcement agencies in Indonesia. Therefore, institutional reform is not enough to overcome the crisis of people's trust in law enforcement agencies, but must be accompanied by factual and concrete actions to resolve this problem. I hope our law enforcement officers don't turn a blind eye and say that everything is fine, even though our enforcement agencies are getting worse and worse from day to day.