Joyce Josephine’s Clarification

Tempo ()

IN the cover story of Tempo English of the January 25-31, 2021 issue titled Aid Packages for the Red Party, a sentence reads: “A law enforcer said Joyce Josephine was the Pertani employee who actively lobbied Adi Wahono and Matheus Joko. When asked to comment, Joyce refused to offer a response. ‘I don’t have the authority to comment,’” she said.”

I would like to make a clarification and rebuttal that the information is incorrect and does not conform to fact and truth. The reasons are: 

1. I am not or it is not true that I am an employee of Pertani as reported by Tempo English.
2. I never and/or it is not true that I actively lobbied Adi Wahono and Matheus Joko for the affairs or interests of Pertani as reported by Tempo English.

Regarding the report, I request that Tempo English make a clarification or a written statement as a correction in the next edition at the latest. 

Joyce Josephine
Jakarta 

Thank you for your clarification. As indicated in the article, we obtained the information about your employee status in Pertani from a law enforcement officer. We also have confirmed it to you—Ed.

Restorative Justice in ITE Law 

THE law has three objectives: justice, certainty, and expediency or known as 3K. Recently, discussions on the three objectives have come to the fore as the government plans to revise the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law. The pendulum weighing the three aims is again debated in cases of criminal indictment based on the ITE Law. 

One of the views states that the consideration of expediency should be prioritized, as cases do not necessarily end in crime. Without such judiciousness, the ITE Law is very vulnerable to politicization of law by anti-criticism authorities. This certainly constitutes a setback in democracy. Moreover, the spirit of digital democracy just gets a boost through social media.

Furthermore, in the perspective of justice, many perpetrators in minor cases that should be settled by peaceful means are arbitrarily subjected to more severe punishments than those for embezzlers of state funds. The process is not fair either as evidence in social media is considered sufficient to get the cases processed faster than the investigation of white-collar crime.

The concept of restorative justice becomes a breakthrough in the criminal system that has long been engulfed in qualms about the effectiveness of the purpose of conviction. In reality, physical sanctions do not spontaneously change behavior and overcome social turmoil. In many cases, the condition just grows worse than before. Therefore, this concept offers three main components of justice, which are restitution, correction and redistribution.

In many countries, restorative justice has been implemented. Apart from post-authoritarian countries like South Africa, advanced nations like Canada and Britain apply this concept. In 2008, Britain reported that restorative justice had reduced the rate of its recidivist cases to 27 percent.

In Indonesia, the number of cases involving recidivist remains high. Sadly, the total of new convicts keeps swelling. The ITE Law also contributes to this. At present, only the handling of child crime is gradually applying the concept of restorative justice.

In ITE cases, the use of ‘flexible’ articles between certainty and expediency or certainty and justice is often debated. For instance, the use of the article of hatred on ethnic, religious, racial and intergroup frequently becomes a struggle to apply Article 28 of the ITE Law for the sake of certainty versus expediency for victims’ rights.

For this reason, with regard to the proposed revision of the ITE Law, in my opinion, the pro and contra camps can be united. But there are some criteria of corroboration that need to consider the 3K dimensions.

First, in terms of procedure there is connection with intention and expression of intention. The tracking of digital traces should be able to provide information for law enforcement personnel whether the person concerned consistently indicates the intention to purposely attack with hatred or commit defamation. Meanwhile, the expression of intention should be subjected to reexamination of the degree of its correlation with the categories of hatred and defamation. Consequently, the criteria of hatred and defamation should be strictly regulated so as not to be elastically interpreted.

Second, in terms of substance the provisions of hatred and defamation in the ITE Law are not directly connected with material loss. The crime of the category serves more on the social concept of ‘self-esteem’ related to the feeling of a certain person/group/community. The solution should not be a criminal sanction, but rather social rehabilitation by peaceful means to make amends for the hurt personal and social feeling.

Yulianus Soni Kurniawan
Depok, West Java