TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Recording Closed Circuit Television aka CCTV is one of the pieces of evidence for the Honorary Council of the Constitutional Court aka MKMK in imposing a written warning sanction to the Judge Guntur Hamzah. In the plenary session for reading the decision, the Honorary Council stated that Guntur violated ethics because he helped change the Constitutional Court’s decision.
However, the trial revealed the fact that MKMK did not know what was discussed between the Registrar named Muhidin and Guntur. In fact, both of them gave contradictory statements regarding the amendment to the Constitutional Court’s decision.
“CCTV recordings also don’t help in this matter, because there is no sound recording,” said MKMK Chairman I Dewa Gede Palguna when reading out the legal and ethical considerations that became the basis for decision-making at the trial at the Constitutional Court Building, Monday, March 20, 2023.
The CCTV is only in the form of an image recording showing the Registrar Muhidin’s movement towards Guntur after being called via a hand-waving code. Then, Guntur spoke briefly to Muhidin. Muhidin went straight to Hakim Arief Hidayat, spoke for a moment, and then headed back to Guntur.
Change of Phrases
The case for amending the Constitutional Court Decision Number 103/PUU-XX/2022 dated Wednesday, November 23, 2023, originating from a lawsuit by advocate Zico Leonard, occurred during the judicial review of Article 23 paragraphs 1 and 2 and Article 27 of the Constitutional Court Law. This judicial review was submitted as a response to Aswanto’s removal as a constitutional judge on September 29, 2022.
Zico found irregularities in the Constitutional Court’s decision on the judicial review. This is because the decision read out was different from the copy he received. The sentence that was read out contained the phrase “thus”, whereas in the copy it changed to “in the future”. He suspects that the change was intentional so that he should be suspected of having violated Article 263 of the Criminal Code regarding document forgery.
The sanctions for Guntur are contained in Decision Number 1/MKMK/T/02/2023 which Palguna read out in court, after examining all related parties. In court, Guntur admitted that he had proposed changing the phrase.
Disappointed Zico
Zico was also disappointed with the MKMK decision which only sanctioned this written warning. MKMK chose a written warning from three types of sanctions available, namely verbal sanctions, written warnings, and dismissal. In fact, it was proven that Guntur was involved in changing the Constitutional Court’s decision with a Registrar named Muhidin.
However, in the MKMK decision, what happened was only throwing blame between Guntur and Muhidin. Zico had been worried about this situation from the start. “(The change in decision) was made on purpose, but (MKMK) did not have the courage to decide on dismissal, this is disappointing,” said Zico.
The problem is that MKMK can only sanction Guntur. MKMK is not authorized to reach Muhidin. Thus, MKMK has provided recommendations to follow up on Muhidin’s actions.
“Need further guidance to the Registrar of the Constitutional Court by authorized officials in accordance with statutory provisions, while still taking into account the aspects of compliance and proportionality,” said one and seven recommendation points in the MKMK decision.
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