Radhiyya Indra, Jakarta – The government-sanctioned police reform commission has proposed demilitarizing the work culture of the National Police as part of broader reforms, amid persistent cases of police brutality that have fueled public demands for systemic change within the institution.
President Prabowo Subianto received recommendations for police reform from the commission in a three-hour meeting at the Palace on Tuesday evening, following months of mounting public pressure over the commission's perceived lack of progress since its establishment in November last year.
Among the recommendations, commission chair Jimly Asshiddiqie highlighted the need to "demilitarize the police's work culture", which was included in a dense, 10-volume-long report the commission gave to Prabowo.
Commission member Ahmad Dofiri, who is also the presidential adviser on public order affairs and police reform, said that "police culture" is part and parcel of the police reform.
"We provided specific and very rigid recommendations [to reform] police culture through the institutional aspect," Dofiri told a press briefing on Tuesday after the meeting with Prabowo.
The recommendation came amid increasing criticisms from human rights groups for what they deemed as entrenched militaristic practices within the police institution that led to repeated cases of violence against civilians.
Prabowo established the reform commission shortly after a string of police brutality cases during the nationwide anti-government protests last August. One case involved the death of online motorcycle transportation driver Affan Kurniawan, who was run over by a police tactical vehicle while merely passing by the protest area in Jakarta.
While Jimly and Dofiri did not elaborate further on the demilitarization plan, the Police Education and Training Institute acting head Insp. Gen. Andi Rian Djajadi had hinted at what it could entail, including through reshaping the early education of police recruits.
"We are currently reviewing training aspects that we deemed as 'the basics' [... ] which include officers carrying weapons and weighted backpacks [during marching and rucking]," Andi said during a meeting with the House of Representatives in April, as quoted from kompas.com.
"We will eliminate them because they are part of militarism," he added.
Police expert Bambang Rukminto of the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISESS) said demilitarizing the police is conceptually possible, echoing a similar need to tackle the issue from the education sector.
However, he warned that the problem required a holistic implementation beyond "superficial" institutional strengthening.
"Demilitarization requires end-to-end transformation, from education that emphasizes de-escalation to clearer limits on police roles and greater public access to institutional data," Bambang told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Without such measures, he said, the police reform agenda risks "becoming only symbolic. A mere gimmick that did not change any practices on the ground."
Implementation awaits
In its main report, the reform commission outlined six main recommendations, which were agreed on by Prabowo during the Tuesday meeting, including strengthening the independence of the National Police Commission (Kompolnas) by granting stronger authority to hold officers accountable and removing ex officio seats on Kompolnas for government officials.
The changes, according to Jimly, are set to be incorporated into the long-delayed revision of the 2002 Police Law, which is still awaiting deliberation at the House.
Other agreed points include maintaining the police under direct presidential authority, preserving the current mechanism for appointing the police chief and tightening the rules on officers' capacity to hold external positions outside the institution.
Police chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who accompanied Prabowo in his meeting with the reform commission on Tuesday, pledged to follow up on the recommendations, saying that the force would implement them gradually "to improve the institution".
Human rights group Setara Institute said that the recommendations must quickly be translated into concrete and measurable policies to avoid repeating failures of past reform attempts.
"The real test now is whether the government will truly move from simply receiving the reports to actually executing and accelerating the police reform agenda," the group said in a statement on Wednesday.