Fight is on against graft remission proposal A coalition of NGOs have joined forces to block an attempt from lawyer and former law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra to relax a 2012 remission policy for corruption convicts. Representing two graft convicts, Yusril filed a judicial review to the Supreme Court in June against the 2012 government regulation that imposed stricter remission requirements on drug, graft and terror convicts. He challenged several articles on remission for graft convicts, arguing they contradicted the 1995 Penitentiary Law and the 1999 Human Rights Law. The NGO coalition said the government must continue implementing the regulation. “We have asked the Supreme Court to listen to our arguments in a session scheduled for next week. The stricter remission policy is aimed at giving a deterrent effect for graft suspects,” said Emerson Yuntho of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), one of the NGOs in the coalition. Legal experts have backed the NGOs’ move. Zainal Arifin Mochtar, legal expert and a researcher of Gadjah Mada University’s Center for Anticorruption Studies, said Yusril had made a flawed legal argument. He said Yusril only focused on Articles 5 and 14 Paragraph 1, which considered remission a right for all prisoners. “He fails to see Article 12 Paragraph 1 of the 1995 law that allows categorizing inmates in criteria tailored to the needs and changing situation of the correctional system,” he said. “The idea of stricter remission is based on the provisions.” Constitutional law expert Refly Harun said the government could not be accused of violating prisoners’ basic rights by applying the rule. “Corruption is an extraordinary crime with an extraordinary investigation process, but why should the punishment be ordinary, not to mention the remission?” he said. “There should be different remission rules for extraordinary and ordinary rimes, or maybe there are people who want to hamper the corruption eradication campaign by using momentum here.” The corruption convicts, backed by some politicians, have raised their demands following the recent Tanjung Gusta prison riot earlier this month, saying they were discriminated against. The government has also undermined its own regulation on remission with the Law and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin issuing a statement that the government has decided not to implement the 2012 government regulation on remissions retroactively. Stricter remission and parole release requirements for graft, drug and terror convicts set by the regulation only applied to those who were convicted after Nov. 12, 2012, when the regulation was signed. Constitutional Court Chief Justice Akil Mochtar, who agreed with a proposal for a stricter remissions, said the government regulation had violated the 1995 law, citing it was better to revise the law.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 08:41:35 +0000