Thursday, June 24, 2010

Equality or Something Like That

According to Indonesian Constitution:

Article 27
(1) All citizens shall be equal before the law and the government and shall be
required to respect the law and the government, with no exceptions.
Article 28D
(1) Every person shall have the right of recognition, guarantees, protection and
certainty before a just law, and of equal treatment before the law.
Sounds great. Ideal. However, in reality, my confidence in our judicial system is getting lower and lower these days. Seeing the unequal treatment before the law of those with and without money, those with and without connections left me broken hearted. What's the point of reformation if it's still the same, if not worse, problems we face every day?

There are plenty of people who supposed to be arrested still walk free, no body prevent them from going abroad, if they finally did (try) prevent them from fleeing abroad, it's always been too late. There are those who supposed to be free ended up in jail. Life is not fair, but it seems it's more unfairer in this place.

Let's see what happened in the last few months. Please, correct me if I was wrong. Take the Anggodo case, he confessed of bribing, but I cant recall he is banned from going abroad eventhough at one point he was a suspect. The witness of Miranda Gultom's case, Nunun Nurbaeti, the wife of former National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Adang Daradjatun, who is the alleged broker of this bribing case still walks free in Singapore. Dont get me started on why she's still a witness instead of a suspect discussion. When I heard that there's travel bans for Luna Maya and Cut Tari who are witnesses at that Peterporn case I couldnt believe it, but moreover, I was flabbergasted reading this at Kompas' site:
Rather than promising to defend the stars’ homes or arrest the radical extremists making the threats, police said they would detain Luna Maya, 29, and Cut Tari, 32, for their own protection.
“The reason is not simply to arrest them but to protect them from mass organisations that are furious,” chief detective Ito Sumardi told reporters.

I thought, the police should protect the witnesses, and arrest the Islamic thugs, NOT the other way around. Is it just me, or the police is afraid of those pulling the Islamic card? Because it is not the first time those thugs get what they want and the police turns the blind eye. Those thugs also did the same thing as what their leader said about Luna-Ariel-Tari:
Their acts have insulted Islam and will have a bad impact on the morality of our young generations.
Please tell me, what rights do we actually have as a common citizen of this country?

5 comments:

colson said...

Though I'm afraid that some kind of class-justice can be found in all countries, and there always is a tendency to give in to major social changes ( Islamic vigilantes in Indonesia, anti Islam vigilantes in The Netherlands - and elsewhere in Europe)it is a fact unfortunately that the Indonesian state of law is still pretty flawed and 'justice' often is something you can buy..

I want to believe however there has been made progress. The good things are that people publicly speak up and criticize ( you do, for one!), that gradually the legal profession gets an influx of new, modern professionals and that some institutional improvements have been introduced (KPK).

triesti said...

Like I said, in Indonesia is much more unfair than say in NL, eventhough each time I see Ayaan Hirsi Ali I couldnt believe that she still got Dutch citizenship after all the lies she told to obtain it at the first place, while some afghan refugees (who actually need them) got send back to Afghanistan, and not to mentioned she caused the breakdown of the cabinet.

A public notary told me this: 'dont ever have a problem with the police, the tax-men, and the prosecutors. You will never win.'

And when you read the paper lately, guess where our problems are?

colson said...

The one thing I was grateful to Hirsi Ali for at the time, was that her fight with that other female monster Verdonk, ended one of Balkenende's cabinets.

Unknown said...

depressing... it just struck me, wasn't a politician caught in a sex tape a few years ago in indonesia. no one tried to arrest him! (altho, that could've been before those laws came into effect)

triesti said...

@Colson, oh Verdonk is another nutcase. I stopped watching the news because watching both women made me literally sick.

@John, it happened in 2006, he was one of the staunch supporter of Anti Porn Bill! The Bill became the Law in 2008. Yahya resigned as member of parliament, and as party official. If they wanted to arrest him, they could've used art 282 Criminal Code. His mistress is now running to become a Bupati or something like that.