Balanced autonomy
Given Indonesia's distinctive geography as the world's largest archipelago and given its huge diversity -- in terms of land conditions, ethnicity and culture as well as material progress -- it is strange that the question of granting greater autonomy to its many regions has still not been completely answered after almost 52 years of independence.
The need for decentralization obviously exists as Indonesia is a country of so many contrasts. Although progress is rapidly making inroads into even the country's remotest corners, stone- age traditions still prevail in a few, long-isolated, areas. The resulting varying lifestyles mean that different approaches to development are required.
It is not as if this need has not been realized. Calls for greater regional autonomy have been made since the early decades of independence and local feelings of being left out of the development process have occasionally led to rebellions provoked by anti-Jakarta sentiments. It was in appreciation of this need that in 1974 the government passed a law on regional autonomy; a very belated move in the eyes of many government critics.
To further illustrate this realization, Ryaas Rasyid, of the state-run Institute of Public Administration, said this week that Jakarta should decentralize some of its authority because local administrations are in a better position to know what their regions need. Decentralization, he said, would benefit central government because it would relieve it of having to spend money on superfluous development projects. More significantly, Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono supported this feeling by reaffirming, at the same seminar that Ryaas spoke at, the government's commitment to delegating more authority to the regency administrations.
Moerdiono's accompanying cautioning remarks about the need for some restraint in this matter seemed rather telling: it could be precisely the factors that dictate the need for autonomy that have so far caused Jakarta to act with caution in granting greater autonomy to the regions. It is not that the need is not recognized, but Indonesia's immense diversity, plus the fact that the country is as it were divided by its archipelagic geography into so many separate regions -- many of which are relatively isolated from the center of government -- could pose more than a few problems regarding control and management for the government in Jakarta.
It is probably this same consideration that sparked Moerdiono's remarks concerning the need for achieving a proper balance between control and democracy in the nation's administration. Authoritarian regimes, Moerdiono said, are doomed to fail because excessive control creates passive, uncreative, people. Such regimes tend to become inefficient over time because they have to carry too many unnecessary burdens. They eventually collapse because their capacity to bear all those burdens remains limited. On the other hand, regimes which ignore the importance of national unity and integration are doomed to undergo a self- defeating process, he said.
One could substitute the word "authoritarian" with "overly centralized", and the significance of Moerdiono's words in the context of regional autonomy and decentralization becomes apparent. For Indonesia, which is a unitarian republic, a strong central administration is natural. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly important that we find the kind of balance which Moerdiono apparently had in mind, by granting enough autonomy to the regions to assure efficient development while still maintaining proper control over major central government policies.
For a vast archipelagic country such as Indonesia, development needs are often area specific. There have been examples enough to show us that, more often than not, overly centralized programs tend to be ineffective and inefficient. Moreover, they could have a harmful impact on the region concerned and on its population. While keeping the overall national interest in mind, we certainly hope that policies can be developed without too much delay to grant our regions the autonomy which they need if they, and this country as a whole, are to reap the greatest possible benefits from the dawning global era.