Part 1 of 2: Will revision of the law on regional autonomy fail?

P. Agung Pambudhi, Executive Director, Monitoring Committee of Regional Autonomy Implementation (KPPOD), Jakarta

The White Paper of the government's economic policies after the ending of its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may set a deadline for a revision of the law on regional autonomy (Law No. 22/1999).

At its own initiative, the legislative body of the House has sent a bill on this revision to the leaders of the House. Still, I'm afraid, this revision will "surely" fail.

But revision is bound to fail if the target is only to meet the deadline before the 2004 general elections. The revision will be categorized as successful if the substance of the law in question is revised for the better and also if the revision is widely accepted by all the stakeholders. Let's now find out why this pessimism about the revision of the law on regional autonomy, a task mandated by Stipulation of the People's Consultative Assembly No. IV/MPR/2000, should be raised as an issue, at least in terms of the participation in the drawing up of the revision and the interest of the stakeholders.

As a political agenda, the revision of the law on regional autonomy will be successful only if the interests of the main stakeholders are adequately accommodated. It is still fresh in our memory how a year ago the idea of revising this particular law was not popular on two counts: First, because the law had just been enforced and second, the central government was yet to popularize the idea of this law to the main stakeholders such as regional administrations, the association of regional administrations, interest groups such as business circles and non-government organizations as well as observers of public administration affairs.

Unfortunately, the refusal to have the law revised was then voiced without hardly any argumentation about the substance of the projected revision. (The only proper argumentation then made was the "disbanding of the regional legislative assemblies".) Clearly, the revision was rejected largely because of a suspicion that the central government was nurturing a hidden agenda to bring back centralization. It was believed that the government was "half-hearted" in enforcing regional autonomy.

The substance of the revision aside, the participation of the stakeholders in the drafting of the revision of this law on regional autonomy has assumed great significance.

Another important role is the involvement of the executive elements of other central government institutions such as the forestry, trade and industry, manpower and communications ministries, the office of the state minister of environmental affairs, the land agency and so forth. It is still a big question mark as to whether these ministries and agency have a uniformity of ideas in defining the scope of their authority in the context of regional autonomy.

Reportedly, the technical team of the government assigned to draw up the revision, headed by the home ministry, is made up of various governmental representatives. Theoretically, this team should accommodate the interests of various sectors. Likewise, according to a member of the team, the draft of the revision has always been distributed to other relevant government institutions so that they can provide the team with useful input.

However, given the lack of harmony in the inter-ministerial cooperation, it is still highly doubtful whether a synergy of the interests of these ministries will ever be successfully established. Take, for example, the scope of authority in land affairs. Will this authority continue to rest with the regional administrations or will it become the authority of the (central) government? All these years, there has been a tendency to give regional administrations only an insignificant role in land affairs (the latest example is the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 34/2003).

Another example can be found in the manpower affairs. Recently (Oct. 15, 2003), the manpower minister stated his stance clearly in a meeting with the employers association and workers' unions that regional autonomy was not necessary for the manpower affairs. He clearly said that manpower affairs should remain within the authority of the central government!

It is necessary for the government to sound out directly the aspirations of a number of regency/municipality administrations in terms of limited representation of the grouping of specific features of these regencies/municipalities (on the basis of the availability of human resources, transportation infrastructure, educational level, culture, border areas of a country, etc.) in order to be able to obtain a direct picture of these particular regencies/municipalities because their aspirations may not be accommodated in the associations.

Regions with poor natural resources, for example, often query whether "state's revenues from man-made resources, like the revenues from natural resources, must be included in the revenue- sharing scheme. Another example is a question about whether or not a region with a large fiscal capacity may receive budgeting allocation (DAU) as the law falls short of stipulating this matter.

As a result of the absence of this stipulation, "rich" regions have also received their DAU, a practice that has indirectly reduced the potential portion of DAU for other regions. Given the differences in interest, limited interests of the managing boards of these associations of regional administrations and the scope of these organizations, the crucial points of the revision may not be accommodated.

The points that may be accommodated will perhaps include such things as the direct election of regional heads by the people, not by the regional legislative assemblies, the annual accountability reports prepared by regional heads, the composition and position of the assemblies and so forth. These are indeed important items but they are yet to sufficiently represent the real needs of a region.

So far, we have touched upon only the government side. Even this discussion is yet to cover the interests of provincial administrations, let alone taking into account the interests of other stakeholders such as the business community. They may be regarded as one of the groups that regional autonomy has "victimized". They have to comply with various regional regulations on the collection of levies, business discrimination and so forth.

In many cases, these regional regulations should not be enforced because they are in conflict with other laws and also because they are not based on the principle of efficiency in economic activity management. In a highly competitive global economy and at a time when the business community is concentrating to introduce internal efficiency, our economic edge has been weakened by new uncertainties in the regions.

The root cause is an unclear scope of authority on the part of government levels as regulated in Law No. 22/1999.

Therefore, for the business community, a revision of the law on regional autonomy will be meaningful only if the law is focused on the scope of authority, sources of revenues and models of regional autonomy monitoring, the three areas that will directly affect business activities.

Meanwhile, it is also necessary to take into account the opinions that non-governmental organizations have voiced as these organizations can be partly considered as representing the public. Non-governmental organizations may be interested in matters linked with the position of public participation in the implementation of regional autonomy. Law No. 22/1999 is yet to accommodate this interest. Otherwise the public won't complain about the laws related to regional autonomy.

Matters of interest to the public may include the realization of the voting right in the election of a regional head, the public's mechanism of control over the executive and legislative powers, the public's involvement in the drawing up of regional policies, natural resources management and so forth.