Boat purchases by local govts protested

A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A non-governmental organization, the Indonesian Human Rights Monitor (Imparsial), urged the government on Monday to cancel the planned purchase of boats worth Rp 130 billion (US$15 million) by six local administrations for the Indonesian Navy.

"The planned purchases are not being carried out transparently. Many of the purchases are being made without a public tender," Imparsial executive director Munir told reporters.

Munir said the purchase of vessels for the Navy should be the responsibility of the central government and paid for out of the state budget, not by local administrations using local budgets.

He also criticized the Navy for acting as "a salesman" for the boat producers, and for urging the administrations to buy the boats in exchange for promises of better maritime security.

"We can see that thus far the boat purchases are at the initiative of the Navy rather than the local administrations," he said.

At least five provinces and one regency have agreed to buy boats for the Navy, namely, Riau, Bangka-Belitung, Banten, Papua and Maluku provinces, and Kutai Kertanegara regency.

Munir said that although the local administrations had agreed to buy the vessels, the funds required had never been mentioned in their local budgets.

He said that as a consequence of the planned purchases of the naval vessels, the budget allocations for the education and health sectors would decrease, as could already be seen from the budgets of Riau and Bangka-Belitung provinces.

"It's sad that a poor province like Bangka-Belitung, which is unable to allocate more than five percent of its budget on education and health, now has to start buying boats for the Navy," he said.

He said the planned boat purchases by local administrations was similar to the decision by the Jakarta administration to cough up Rp 29 billion to buy intelligence-gathering equipment for the Jakarta Military Command.

Since local autonomy was introduced in 2001, some local administrations have provided money out of their budgets for improvements to security in their respective jurisdictions.

The moves have raised concerns among analysts, who fear that such practices would lead the military to be loyal to provinces and regencies that purchage those defense equipment only at the expense of national security as a whole.

The Navy said earlier that many of its warships were not sea- worthy, making it almost impossible for them to guard country's vast sea from foreign fishing boats.

The Navy, Police and Army often complain that their budgets are insufficient to meet their needs, and ask local administrations to help purchase security equipment in exchange for better security arrangements in their respective areas.