Revision Of The Prosecutor's Law Is Not Necessary And Prone To Overlap Authority

Illustration of the Attorney General's Office (photo: rizky/voi.id)

JAKARTA - Professor of the Faculty of Law, Universitas Brawijaya, Ali Syafaat, assessed that the revision of Law Number 11 of 2021 concerning the Prosecutor's Office was not yet needed. There is currently no urgent reason to make changes to the regulations.

"Changes to the Prosecutor's Law do not yet have urgency. Likewise the National Police Bill and the TNI Bill. If there is an additional authority, there will definitely be conflicts of interest and overlap of authority," Ali said in a public discussion QUo Vadis Adding Law Enforcement Authority and Public Supervision Urgency", Saturday, February 22 in Tebet, South Jakarta.

Ali assessed that currently what is more important is to strengthen law enforcement control agencies. After all, this change in law is considered to be dangerous for democracy and human rights (HAM) in the country.

"The change to this law, which is referred to as autocratic legalism, is dangerous for democracy and human rights as well as a state of law," he said.

"If the revision continues to be forced, it will disturb and threaten civil liberties. If we continue to be forced, we are suspicious of what is happening and continues to be forced, whether there is an interest in power," he continued.

Meanwhile, Member of the Prosecutor's Commission for the period 2019-2023 Bhatara Ibnu Reza highlighted the granting of very broad authority to the Adhyaksa Corps. According to him, the addition of authority is very dangerous in the context of law enforcement and democracy.

"The authority to conduct wiretapping that can threaten human rights, to dangerous intelligence functions and has the potential to be misused arbitrarily," explained Ibnu.

Ibnu is of the view that the intelligence function in the Prosecutor's Office should work in a secret room. It is not permissible, for example, that Kasie Intel calls people outside the context without reason and sufficient preliminary evidence because they are vulnerable to fraud as in the extortion case carried out by prosecutors against teachers in Indragiri Hilir.

"The commission went to the field and carried out monitoring, from the results of the monitoring it was proven that those involved in the extortion were prosecutors at the District Attorney's Office," he said.

"This is dangerous and easy for abuse of power for political interests or other purposes outside the duties and functions of the Prosecutor's Office," said Ibnu.

Not only increasing authority, a number of other things in the revision of the Prosecutor's Law were also highlighted. For example, those related to the right to immunity that are vulnerable to being used by rogue prosecutors, said Awan Purwadi as a legal practitioner.

"Even though the Prosecutor's Law in 2021 has given excessive authority to the Prosecutor and has the potential to be misused, such as the issue of the Prosecutor's immunity rights," said Awan.

These various conditions made the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) member, Gina Sabrina, reminded that the addition of authority for prosecutors should be accompanied by strengthening supervision. Otherwise, human rights violations to the many code of ethics that have occurred can increase if the revision of the Prosecutor's Law is carried out.

"The Prosecutor's Office is widely complained about regarding customers of codes of ethics and determination, arbitrary detention. Changes to the Prosecutor's Law must consider checking and balances mechanisms so as not to lead to abuse of power," concluded Gina.