Basten Gokkon & Kennial Caroline Laia, Jakarta – The government, as part of its ongoing bid to abolish local elections and return to a system of appointing regional leaders by legislature, has once again begun highlighting the shortcomings of the regional autonomy policy that it introduced in 2001.
Led by the Home Affairs Ministry, the government's drive has focused on the high level of discord – up to 95 percent, according to government figures – between election regional heads and their deputies and the slow pace of regional development throughout the country.
Djohermansyah Djohan, the ministry's director general for regional autonomy, says such rifts extend not only to the local bureaucracy, but also to the people of the region.
"That makes for an adverse working environment, in which public officials are haunted by the feeling that the colleague next to them is an enemy," he says.
Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi says a revision of regional autonomy is needed to make the policy more effective without compromising on the spirit of decentralization and democracy.
"We fully realize that there is a mechanism in the implementation of regional autonomy that needs to be revised, including regional elections, to make it more efficient without annihilating the spirit of democracy," he says. Djohermansyah said that regional autonomy has also not contributed much to the improvement of the country's human development index.
"The HDI has not increased significantly and it even seems to be declining. The infant mortality rate in most regions has increased and water management has not reached national standards," he says. The HDI is a gauge for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
Indonesia's HDI was 0.629 in 2013 (a level of 1.0 is considered the ideal), from 0.617 in 2012, according to the United Nations Development Program.
The Home Affairs Ministry points out that the HDI today is down from the figure of 0.658 in 1995, a year before the regional autonomy policy was conceived – but that fails to account for the fact that a new method of calculating the HDI was introduced in 2008. (In 2007, for instance, the HDI was 0.734, compared to 0.593 in 2009).
World Bank data also belie claims that infant mortality has worsened. The data show a steady decrease in the infant mortality rate since 1996, from 49 deaths per 1,000 live births that year, to 26 per 1,000 births in 2012.
Money trail
Gamawan also argues that most of the funds disbursed to regional governments are used for "political agendas" than for the public good. "About Rp 600 trillion" – or $51.6 billion – "from the state budget is allocated for regional funding each year," he says.
"At the end of 2013, [the budget] was increased by around Rp 60 trillion for villages. Despite all this [money] there is still not much improvement in the regions. Something is wrong here and that's why we are evaluating it."
Gamawan blames political interests for poor governance in the regions. "Local officials should not be involved in politics, but what happens now is exactly that," he says.
Djohermansyah says that ideally at least 60 percent of each region's budget should be allocated for infrastructure development and improvement of public services, and the rest for bureaucrats' salaries.
"[However], the budget portion for the infrastructure development and public services has been reduced and most of the budget is allocated for civil servants' salaries," he says.
Election headaches
Regional elections, which the government is seeking to abolish through a bill that is now at the House of Representatives, are costly affairs that breed conflict and encourage corruption, Gamawan says.
"According to our data, 70 people have been killed during regional elections [in the past nine years] and many buildings have been set on fire in regions throughout Indonesia," he says.
He says that of the 1,027 regional elections – for governor, district head and mayor – held since 2003, 95 percent of the winning candidates have gone on to break with their running mates, often competing against each other in the next election.
That, Gamawan argues, means development issues are put on the back-burner as the regional leaders focus on their own political squabbling.
Ministry data also show that 321 regional heads and their deputies have been charged in criminal cases, predominantly corruption, between 2004 and 2014. In the majority of cases, the ministry says, the graft is compelled by a winning candidate's need to repay funding and favors to campaign donors and local businesses.
Gamawan says the 2004 Regional Governance Law falls short in this regard because it carries no sanctions for regional heads who commit crimes.
"There's no channel through which the central government can impose direct punishment on governors, district heads and mayors," he says.
"Although governance is decentralized, we're still under one government. Regional heads' authority is vested in them by the central government. Yet if they commit any violations, the central government is powerless to punish them directly."
Changing the law
The Home Affairs Ministry is pushing for amendments to the regional autonomy law to create effective regional governments that will eventually improve the people's welfare, Gamawan says.
"There are two articles that are being discussed intensively with the House. We have entered our 10th meeting [with legislators]," he says, adding that the articles in question concern regional elections.
The amendments are expected to define punishments for regional officials who violate the law, with penalties to range from warnings to temporary suspension to firing, Djohermansyah says.
But the main amendment, and one that critics have taken the most issue with, is the abolition of direct elections for district heads and mayors, who will instead be appointed by district legislatures and city councils, respectively.
Provincial governors will still be directly elected, under the ministry's proposed amendment. As part of the planned changes, the candidates running for regional head will be allowed to pick a deputy after winning.
This move, the central government says, will ensure they are partnered with someone with whom they can work effectively – and not someone chosen out of political expediency, with whom they will likely fall out before the end of their first five years in office.
James Gilling, the head of Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Decentralization, says it is important that the government clear up the inconsistencies in the regional autonomy law.
"There are inconsistencies and conflicting regulations at all levels twat require adjustments and amendment," he says. "For the government, the revisions to the laws on regional autonomy and decentralization are an important part of the improvements [...] to decentralization."
But Gilling notes that regional autonomy has become an important part of democracy in the country, aprticularly the direct regional elections.
"Local governments are now determined to make development their priority and give accountability to the locals. The central government also recognizes the unique characteristics of certain regions such as Aceh, Jakarta and Yogyakarta," Gilling says.
Siti Zuhro, a researcher with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI, says the revision should be properly managed and coordinated at all levels of government, from the national to the regional, to avoid confusion.
"If a revision is needed, the government has to thoroughly consider the need for it and determine whether autonomy should be centered at the provincial level. It is a big task," she says.
Siti says Gamawan's proposal to abolish direct regional elections for district heads and mayors needs to be in line with the Constitution. A system of regional legislative appointment was practiced under the iron-fisted rule of the late Suharto, and critics say reviving it will set a bad precedent for the country's still developing democracy.
Siti also takes issue with a suggestion by the home affairs minister that if the elections for regional heads are not to be abolished, then they should all be held on the same day, preferrably at the same time as the national and regional legislative elections.
Gamawan says the costs – for printing and distributing the ballots and setting up and manning polling stations, on the government's part; and for campaigning, on the candidates' part – can be lowered significantly under such a system. "To hold all the elections at the same time is not really effective or efficient," Siti says.
Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/regional-autonomy-needs-revising-govt/