A lesson in transparency

A lesson in transparency

Ahmad Suaedy, Asia Foundation, Jakarta

Gorontalo may be Indonesia's newest, or 32nd province, and its
governor, Ir H. Fadel Muhammad, may be rumored to be subject to a
travel ban. But the residents of Gorontalo have begun to
implement transparency and to exercise supervision over their
administration for the sake of good governance.

While other regions are striving to raise not only locally
generated revenue but also legislators' salaries by producing new
bylaws, the Gorontalo municipality in the north of Sulawesi is
trying hard to improve public participation and transparency.

About a month after the first anniversary of the establishment
of the Gorontalo province on Feb. 16, the municipality produced
three bylaws that reflected efforts to supervise the
administration and to encourage public participation in city
planning. These three bylaws concerned community-based
development planning (No. 2/2002), transparency in the
administration (No. 3/2002) and supervision over the
administration (No. 4/2002).

Ratified on March 13, these bylaws are binding for the
regional administration and set forth clear penalties for
violations. Moreover, city planning must start at the subdistrict
level upward -- the other way round from the New Order era.

Of course, these bylaws did not come out of the blue. At
first, non-governmental organizations urged the local
administration and legislature to encourage public participation
and provide information.

"It wasn't easy," said Nixon Ahmad, the coordinator of a forum
of non-governmental organizations that facilitated the
establishment of these three bylaws. They brought together
community members, legislators and the authorities.

At first, following the empowerment of the community by a
number of non-governmental organizations, the legislative and
executive bodies were approached about the possibility of a
regulation on administrative transparency and public
participation.

Luckily, there was a rule that an initiative from the
legislative assembly could be raised with a minimum of only six
members from two factions. "That was what we did at first," said
Nixon. After the initiative was signed by six members, other
parties were approached, with satisfactory results.

"There was even an ensuing impression that if any members of
the legislative assembly or the executive body failed to support
this proposal, they would be deemed conservative and their
reputation as important figures would drop," Nixon said.

Meanwhile, Gusnar Ismail, the former municipality secretary
and chairman of the regional planning agency, and now a deputy
governor, said, while serving as a mediator between non-
governmental organizations and the legislative and executive
bodies, that mayors and executive officials in general needed
support to boost Gorontalo. This support is necessary, he noted,
especially considering that the locals rejected the protracted
construction of a market for the Gorontalo municipality during
the New Order era.

"We allowed the legislative agency to table their initiative
proposal in the hope that we would be able to better plan
development," he said.

So, the wishes of the legislative and the executive agencies
really match. Gusnar even expressed the hope that what happened
at the municipality level would also occur at the provincial
level.

Both Nixon Ahmad and Nurdin Mogoginta, who has replaced Gusnar
as the regional secretary and chairman of the regional
development planning agency for Gorontalo municipality, admitted
the great difficulty in implementing these bylaws.

"We are not used to having a good filing system and don't have
the necessary skills to communicate with the community. We need
to learn more," Mogoginta said. He added that they would need
more than six months as a transitional period for the enforcement
of these bylaws. "We must really work hard," he noted.

That these bylaws are indeed very difficult to implement is
implied in the regulation on city planning, which states that
community-based development planning (P2BM) is based on dialog
and persuasion -- alien features under the New Order era. This is
done through workshops, starting from the subdistrict and moving
upward to the municipality level.

All regional heads concerned -- subdistrict heads, district
heads or mayors -- are responsible for these workshops. The
organization of these workshops must involve social groups
referred to explicitly in the bylaws.

A supervisory body involving the public has been set up to
ensure that the community-based development process takes place.
Plans can be rejected if found to be not in accord with this
process and regional heads face sanctions depending on the
severity of the mistake.

"Practically, the administration at all levels cannot do any
planning without involving the public, and this planning cannot
be top-down in nature," Nixon said.

As for the bylaw on transparency, the administration will be
obligated to actively provide information -- requested or
otherwise -- about policies concerning the public. The party
providing the information will not have the right to inquire
about the intention and purpose of the information seeker.

Supervision of the administration involves superiors,
legislators and the public.

As the regulations are quite clear, it is expected that
locally generated revenue will not be leaked to officials and the
powers-that-be.

Hopefully, more small worthy lessons in local governance are
to be found elsewhere amid the confusion over regional autonomy.