Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – The Indonesian police have taken another significant step towards their long awaited split from the military – restructuring their ranks and replacing their military ranks with British style ranks.

The rank restructuring process is part of the reform process, aimed at transforming the police from a weaker arm of the military, whose focus during the Suharto era was more on internal security, to an independent police force.

Next year the police force will become answerable directly to the president rather than part of the Defence Ministry – moving from an organisation that models itself on the military to one that enforces law and order. They will also take over security of the president and vice-president.

Under the new outfit, a colonel in the police force will change his rank to senior superintendent while a major becomes an assistant superintendent and a captain becomes an inspector.

Under the new police chief General Rusdihardjo, the police have been making various efforts to demonstrate their commitment to law and order and their independence from the military. Last year General Rusdihardjo announced a tough new anti-drug policy among the force. Several police officers found to have used amphetamines were expelled from the police force.

While the publicity surrounding such ground breaking approaches to disciplining their own members has obviously raised public perception of the police, their reputation is still far from professional.

A poll in Indonesian daily Kompas showed that almost 50 per cent of the population thought the police did not solve problems, 78 per cent thought it was natural to pay police extra for their assistance and only 46 per cent thought police attitude had changed to become more sympathetic towards people.

While these figures are hardly promising, they have actually improved a little in the last year when even more people thought police did not solve problems or try to change. When asked about police treatment towards ordinary civilians in places such as Maluku or Aceh, assistant spokesman Colonel Salehsaaf said "all the criticism we take as constructive and we try to make our personnel more professional". While city police chief Major-General Nurfaizi said the recent police training had focussed on "how to handle the masses while observing human rights".

Both the police and the military have long been suspected of being involved in various corrupt practices such as dealing in drugs, and accepting bribes for ignoring crimes but police leaders say they want to clean up the force's image.

Australian Federal Police liaison officer in Jakarta, Leigh Dixson, said he thought the moves to stamp out drug abuse and corruption within the force had been quite positive. "They've have shown that they are serious about stamping out narcotic trading, that it won't be tolerated using public humiliation," he said of the public dismissal of errant officers.

Mr Dixson says he is also confident that the new police leadership is committed to controlling crowds in a non-confrontational way, thereby avoiding some of the Suharto and Habibie era abuses such as shooting student demonstrators.