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| Andrew Chan (left) and Myuran Sukumaran (right) |
On October 20, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will step down as President of Indonesia after two five-year terms, and Joko Widodo will be inaugurated. What will be the potential impact of the change of Presidency on those prisoners on death row in Indonesia, which include Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran?
Mr Yudhoyono has a mixed record on the death penalty. Under his 10-year presidency, 14 prisoners were executed for premeditated murder, three for terrorist offences, and four for drug trafficking. However, executions by the state declined notably in his second term with no prisoner executed between 2009 and 2012, in part because of domestic concern over the fate of Indonesian domestic workers sentenced to death abroad.
Around 140 people remain on death row in Indonesia. Thirty to 40 of these prisoners have exhausted all options of appeal. Their fate rests solely with the Attorney-General's Office, which bears the responsibility for carrying out executions, though possibly with the president's tacit consent.
For another forty or so prisoners who have had no luck overturning their death sentences in the courts, the final option to avoid the firing squad is presidential clemency: the power of the president under the Indonesian Constitution and the 2010 Clemency Law to reduce a death sentence to life imprisonment.
Over the last weeks of his presidency, Yudhoyono has faced up to 40 clemency petitions from prisoners on death row, and hundreds or even thousands of petitions from non-death row prisoners seeking to reduce the length of their prison sentences.
Unless they have already been decided on, Chan's and Sukumaran's mercy petitions will be among those sitting on the president's desk. What will happen to these petitions as Mr Yudhoyono leaves office and the Widodo administration steps in?
Source: The Age, Daniel Pascoe, October 16, 2014
