Tony Hotland, Jakarta – A professional study has slammed the government's efforts to reform the country's security sector, saying the military, police and intelligence bodies have been too slow to implement change legislated more than five years ago.

The Almanac of Reform in Indonesia's Security Sector concluded the military, police and intelligence groups were "dragging their feet toward full reform" that was supposed to see them with less power and more accountability.

The report launched Thursday was put together by the Indonesian Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies (Lesperssi) and the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces.

Legislator Suripto at the House of Representatives Commission III on legal affairs said there remained a powerful mind-set within said security sectors that they had the right to stay involved in politics and private business.

"The attitude that prevailed for more than 30 years (during Soeharto's authoritarian New Order regime) has been hard to kill," Suripto said.

He said the business interests the military and police particularly had been encouraged to acquire in years past was a difficult trend to abolish. "This has been a hampering factor (to reform efforts) and has made any level of professionalism difficult to reach," Suripto said.

The 2004 law-mandated obligation for the military to transfer its non work-related shares in business ventures has to-date not been implemented.

Military analyst Kusnanto Anggoro said in the almanac efforts to reform the defense sector had diminished in the last five years. "The target of any reform efforts should be solving the technical and operational problems rather than sticking to political and on-paper reform," Kusnanto said.

The police force was separated from the military in 2000 and was supposedly tasked to handle internal security. However Kusnanto said the police force was "still failing to change its arrogant and power-abusing attitude despite massive refreshment in its structure and regulations".

Researcher and police observer Muradi said the absence of attitude change was most clearly evident in the police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob), a paramilitary unit of the force. He said Brimob would take more time to adjust to the concept of civilian police because it had initially enjoyed special powers.

But Muradi said if the Brimob was not reformed completely, the force would become an enemy of the Indonesian people, who were largely focused on democracy and freedom.

Bhatara Ibnu Reza of the rights group Imparsial analyzed various security-related bills that have articles against the idea of rights-protection and professionalism. The bills he studied for the almanac included the intelligence bill, which would see intelligence bodies able to arrest and detain people. He also studied a bill on national security, which would see the military tasked with assisting local administrations in their operations.

Bhatara said the Indonesia government and its parliament had no other choice but to immediately implement and enforce legislated reforms to ensure the country moved ahead as planned.