Not Easy to Formulate High Judge Empowerment Scheme
Jakarta | badilag.net
“We really want to make high judge as front guard of the Supreme Court,” said Director General, beginning the Workshop of High Judge Empowerment in meeting room of Cemara Hotel, Jakarta, Tuesday night (28/2/2012). The participants of the meeting were directors of Badilag, all chairmen of Religious High Courts in Jawa and Sumatra and many high judges of the areas.
Although the main goal of the workshop was to formulate the model for development and supervision conducted by high judge, many other issues were also discussed. It is understandable since the problems faced by high judges are not as simple as imagined by most people. “Now, high judges no longer have charisma in the front of chairmen of religious courts, even the staffs fo the high court itself,” complain some participants.
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Many factors cause this reality, such as the fact that the quality of high judges is not evenly spread due to recruitment process which does not yet refer to the law. Besides, not all high judges have the same apportunity to upgrade their skill through technical training and guidance.
Being less responsive toward various existing development may also cause this problem. It’s often found that, when conducting supervision, some high judges give different opinions on the same subject. Beside that, personal performance of some judges who ride motorcycle to the office and stay in “inappropriate” rent home, also contributes to this decreasing respect toward high judges.
A team to formulate the result of the workshop was formed, consisting of: Wildan Suyuthi (chairman), Bahrus Syam Yunus (vice chairman), M. Muzhaffar (secretary), Ahmad Fathoni, M. Arsyad Mawardi, Ruslan Harun Al-Rayid, and A. Choiri (members).
Initial effort done by the team is formulating the issue. Beside discussing the problem of decreasing high judge charisma, the main priority is to count work load of high judges in religious courts. It is then known that compared to the number of high judges, the quantity of cases received is relatively little.
From that conclusion, the role of high judge to develop and supervise is understandable. The question is, how is the method of development and supervision? What should be prepared? How is the budget? The team has agreed that before doing the job, high judges must firstly be trained. The initiator may come from two sides: internal, i.e. Religious High Court or external, namely Badilag or other institutions.
In general, there are nine objects of development and supervision: first, understanding formal and material law, second, court management, third, case administration, fourth, session administration and verdict execution, fifth, general administration which comprises personnel, financial, archieve, library, and correspondance affairs, sixth, public service, seventh, beraucracy reform implementation and reform priority program like court transparancy and justice for the poor program, eighth, information technology utilization like SIADPA, website, and SIMPEG, ninth, handling public and internal complaint.
There are many other issues that have been discussed and finalized in the program which would later be accompanied with rules and laws to be emplemented. It’s clear that it’s not easy to apply the theory.
(Salman)