Regional autonomy experts are calling on the central government to focus on merging the country’s worst-performing provinces, regencies and municipalities, given their failure to bring significant progress to their people and strengthen democracy.
Several critics have also urged the government to maintain the
moratorium against the creation of new regions, despite proposals for
new jurisdictions continually being pushed by lawmakers.
Siti
Zuhro, a member of the Home Ministry’s Indonesian Institute of Sciences
(LIPI) expert team, said the moratorium, set to end in December, should
be kept in place to curb political enthusiasm from local elites and
political parties to form new regions. According to a government
evaluation, almost all of the 205 new regions formed between 2001 and
2008 failed to perform well in improving social welfare and
strengthening democracy.
“Both the central government and the
House of Representatives should close the channel for the increasing
number of proposals for new regions, at least for the time being, and
focus on the merger of the under-performing regions,” Siti said
recently.
“Otherwise, we will see more bloodshed.”
Siti
was referring to a 2008 rally that ended in the death of North Sumatra
Legislative Council speaker Azis Angkat, in connection to the proposed
formation of Tapanuli province, which led the central government to
launch the moratorium against new regions.
She warned that the
political interests behind the House’s approval of new regions have
failed to thoroughly take into account numerous crucial factors,
including the administrative and human resources requirements, set by
the government in forming new regions.
The central government
allocated Rp 1.33 trillion (US$144.97 million) in general allocation
funds for 22 newly developed regions in 2003, doubling that to Rp 2.6
trillion for 40 new regions in 2004 and then allocating Rp 47.9 trillion
in 2010.
The government has also allocated funds to build
infrastructure in new, under-developed regions. These funds are
incentives that are suspected to have contributed to the repeated
proposals for new regions.
Public administration expert Ryas
Rasyid, who initially helped design the country’s regional-autonomy
framework and now a presidential advisor on bureaucratic reform, said
the government should maintain the moratorium.
“The government
should speed-up regional autonomy in Aceh and Papua to allow them to
catch up with other developed provinces,” he said.
Ryas added
that improving the autonomy of Aceh and Papua was crucial to improving
the welfare of people in areas located on the border of neighboring
countries.
According to a government evaluation in April 2011,
three years after Government Regulation No. 6/2008 on the evaluation of
local governments was issued, almost all new regions formed between 2000
and 2008 failed to reach minimum targets set by the central government
in the areas of public services, governance, competitiveness and social
welfare.
Only the municipalities of Banjarbaru in South
Kalimantan and Cimahi in West Java scored relatively high, partly thanks
to being administrative municipalities since the New Order era.
Of
the seven new provinces, North Maluku, Gorontalo and Bangka Belitung
scored below the minimum of 60 out of 100. West Papua, effectively
formed in 2003, was the worst-performing province.
The government
also ranked the 198 new regencies and municipalities regarding the
local governments’ performance and has released the top ten performing
and under-performing administrations, according to the same criteria.
The
evaluation method gives a weight of 30 percent to social welfare, 25
percent each for good governance and public service, and 20 percent for
competitiveness.
The independent Regional Autonomy Watch (KPPOD) criticized the way the central government evaluated the regions.
KPPOD
external affairs manager Robert Endi Jaweng hailed the systematic
evaluation method but said it has not been applied regularly and fairly.
He
said that based on KPPOD’s field observations, the evaluation, which
was conducted only once in a decade, was unfair and the inputs for the
evaluation were based on the new regions’ compulsory regular reports,
random monitoring and questionnaires.
“If a new region forgets to
send its report on activities in certain fields or its report fails to
meet the standard requirements, it will be crossed out in the
evaluation,” he said.
Robert said several new regions had been
deemed under-performing for failing to submit their reports regularly,
but they actually had improvements in the subject areas.
The
KPPOD urged close monitoring and human-resources training of personnel
in charge of the new regions to improve their performance.
Robert
said the government lacks the political commitment to enforce
Government Regulation No. 6/2008 on evaluation of local governments and
Government Regulation No. 129 on the formation and merger of new
regions.
“The government should have evaluated the new regions
three times since the regulation was issued and merge the ten most
under-performing regions with their nearest region to prevent them from
overburdening the state budget,” he said.
The House greeted the
government’s plan to be more selective and alert in forming new regions,
but warned against the proposed merger of the worst performing regions.
Deputy
chairman of the House Commission II overseeing domestic governance and
regional autonomy, Gandjar Pranowo, said a “partnership approach” in
proposing the merger of regions would be needed to overcome likely
resistance from local elites and political parties.