Above the Constitution is God

The plan of Constitutional Court Chief Justice Arief Hidayat, 61, to take some days off in his hometown of Semarang three weeks ago, was not to be. When he landed at Ahmad Yani Airport that Thursday morning, he was all set to go teach at the 17 Agustus 1945 University in the city. But a telephone call from Jakarta made him turn around and fly right back to Jakarta. But not before a journalist gave him the shock of his life, when he was asked to comment on a news report that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had arrested one of his judges.

That evening, back in Jakarta, Arief received confirmation that Patrialis Akbar, one of the Constitutional Court judges, had indeed been arrested. The charge against Patrialis was bribery involving a judicial review of Law No. 41/2014 on Livestock and Animal Health. Patrialis, who was justice and human rights minister from 2009 to 2011, was also accused of leaking the results of the judicial review, to Basuki Hariman, a beef trader who is suspected of bribing the judge. "Here we go again, another blunder," said Arief. This is the second time Arief has gone through such an incident. The first case involved Akil Mochtar, his predecessor, who was accused of accepting a bribe over a dispute on the results of the regional chief executives' elections in 2013.