Nivell Rayda – Without any real supervision from the central government, regional autonomy had created several provinces with puppet governments, secretly controlled by political parties and big businesses, autonomy analysts warned on Monday.

In the reform era that followed the fall of President Suharto in 1998, the central government began to delegate its powers to the regions with the aim of ensuring more effective development.

Syarif Hidayat, a regional autonomy analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI, said on Monday that weak supervision had also allowed several provinces and districts to develop puppet governments of several political elites.

He was commenting on comments last week by former Home Affairs Minister Ryaas Rasyid, one of the architects of regional autonomy, who said autonomy had failed to create effective governments despite their authority growing stronger largely due to weak supervision by the central government.

"In these provinces, the winning political parties establish one of its own members in the governor or district head posts, not for their capacities as leaders but for reasons that would voice the parties' interests," Syarif said.

"When they do, all the policies benefit the party members in their businesses and political careers. In return, the DPRD [Regional Representatives Council] support all of the leaders' policies and ignore all irregularities in the provinces' budgets or evaluations from independent auditors."

In other provinces, such as West Sumatra and Riau Islands, there might be no true majority in the councils but, with a lack of experience in policy making and managing the economy, the governors and district heads became pawns for several political elites, the analyst said.

"The political elites are former governors, senior officials, party leaders and central government figures and they serve as patrons," Syarif said. "These people are the true leaders in these local governments, dictating policies and regulations in the provinces."

Erwizan Erman, a LIPI researcher, said local governments were also controlled by big businesses. "The local governments have access to policy making but no money, so they are easily controlled by businesses that have money and want access to policy making," he said.

Erwizan said that in the Bangka Belitung Province, a tin mining company is secretly controlling the local government there.

"By making huge donations to the governor, the mining company ensures that it retains an absolute monopoly over the mining industry there, eliminating all other competition looking to enter the area," he said.

The researcher said the government has overlooked the environmental damage caused by the company and suppressed criticism against the corporation.

Currently, the authority to supervise and evaluate local government lies with the Development Finance Comptroller, or BPKP.

However, Purwo said the BPKP findings are meaningless. "There are no sanctions. The central government should follow up the BPKP audits and findings and give them sanctions," he said. "I think by doing so, local governments will be more transparent."