TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Supreme Court judge Timur Manurung should know better than to meet with one of the plaintiffs involved in cases he is handling. He should be protecting his impartiality and maintaining his principle of fairness. And going out to dinner with one of the plaintiffs is clearly a gross violation of ethics which can lead to a criminal offence.
Hence there is reason for the Judicial Commission to suspect the meeting between judge Timur Manurung and Swie Teng (Kwee Cahyadi Kumala). Timur is suspected of being entertained in luxurious eateries by the owner of Sentul City, who may be indicted in a case of trying to bribe Bogor Regent Rahmat Yasin.
The judge can claim the dinners were held before Swie Teng was ever indicted and the friendship between them was based, among other things, on their frequent meetings at church events. But all these arguments sound hollow because the Bandung Corruption Court indicted Yohan Yap, a subordinate of Swie Teng, for bribing Regent Rahmad to the tune of Rp4 billion. Meanwhile, Bogor Regent Rahmad himself is now in jail.
The case involves the construction of Bukit Jonggol Asrie and a number of staff and lawyers who clearly tried to get around paying the fine and the fee for construction or zoning violations.
This time the Judical Commission, led by Suparman Marzuki must move fast. It should not be a problem for the commission to gather the witnesses and the evidence to make a case against Swie Teng. In particular, the fact that he and four others in his business met the judge for dinner is already a clear breach of ethics.
It is now up to the Judicial Commission to prove that the dinner was indeed a meeting to conspire for Swie Teng to escape the law. It is now known that Swie Teng had also been eyed by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and that his hard work in lobbying judge Timur was an attempt to transfer the case and the papers to the Supreme Court where his case could be dropped over a technicality. This was made possible by judge Timur suspected of taking out the archives from the KPK.
This conspiracy should be easy to prove if the Supreme Court opens up and does not close its doors to an investigation on one of its justices. And this must be done quickly before Timor takes it upon himself to retaliate by reporting one of the Judicial Commission members to the police. If the Supreme Court wants to protect its reputation and distance itself from one of its rotten judges, it should allow investigators and the Judicial Commission to complete the case against Justicee Timur and Swie Teng. (*)
