Jakarta – A survey conducted by the Partnership for Governance Reform has found that provincial governments were underperforming and that there was a clear connection between the performance of a Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD) and that of its governor's office.
The survey, which took place from the second half of 2012 to April 2013, was conducted in 33 provinces across the country. According to the results, Yogyakarta had the best provincial government with a score of 6.8 out of 10, followed by East Java with a score of 6.43, Jakarta (6.37), Jambi (6.24) and Bali (6.19).
"When the provincial governor notched a good performance, that DPRD also did," said Lenny Hidayat, the principal researcher and consultant for Indonesia Governance Index at Partnership. "The political party most strongly represented in each legislative council might also have an effect on the results of the scores."
By and large, the party of the governor in a province tended to be the same as the majority in its legislative council. East Java, Jakarta and Jambi are run by Democratic Party governors and legislative council majorities.
The Bali administration is led by a governor affiliated with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which also dominates the council.
North Maluku province ranked last in the survey with a score of 4.45, preceded by West Papua, with a score of 4.48. The two provinces were governed by politicians from the Golkar Party when the survey was conducted.
At the time of the survey, only Yogyakarta, which has special autonomy, was a multi-party province: The DPRD leader was from the PDI-P, the ruling party in the council was the Democratic Party and the governor, Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, was from the Golkar Party.
Previously, the Kemitraan organization had conducted the same provincial governance survey in 2008. The recent survey found that things had been improving in several provinces.
"However, these improvements are not enough to indicate any significant effects. The average score for a provincial government was 5.7, which is still well below the maximum score of 10," Inda Presanti Loekman, Kemitraan knowledge and research manager said.
The scoring system used in the survey assesses how provincial governments perform in four areas: governance, bureaucracy, civil society and economic sector employees.
Scores are tallied via three methods: analysis of objective government data, the accessibility of that data and the results of questionnaires answered by 35 people in each province from different sectors in society, ranging from government officials to activists.
In the 2009 provincial and regional elections, the Golkar Party fared the best, winning 15 out of 33 provinces. The Democratic Party came in second with 13 provinces and the PDI-P came in third with 5 provinces. (fss)
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/27/provincial-governments-subpar-survey.html