Balanced autonomy

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.