Although many of Indonesia's industrial assets are now in the government's hands, another vital part of the country's life is still run strictly for profit. This part is, unfortunately, the law courts. In 1997, a clerk at the Supreme Court was captured on tape telling a businessman how it works. "If you give us 50m rupiah but your opponent gives us more, then the case will be won by your opponent." Can the new government get the law back into the courts? As in every country whose legal system has for too long been manipulated by a dictatorship, it is going to take time. Indonesia, one of the most corrupt places in the world (see chart 2), will be lucky if a respectable justice system emerges within a couple of generations. The essential thing is to make a clear-cut start. If honest people are to trust the system, and dishonest ones to fear it, the government must demonstrate that it will not tolerate the most outrageous kinds of behaviour, and then steadily extend its definition of outrageousness until the idea of equal justice under the law has really taken root in everybody's mind.
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