Civil servants need political freedom: LIPI
Civil servants need political freedom: LIPI
JAKARTA (JP): A government-commissioned survey by the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has recommended that
civil servants should be allowed to join any political
organization.
The survey, made public yesterday, suggested that as long as
the six-million-strong Indonesian Civil Servants Corps remained
tied to Golkar poor public service standards would persist.
Civil servants are obliged, by decrees, to support the
government-backed political grouping although no law requires
them to affiliate to any political organization.
Three political organizations are sanctioned in Indonesia to
contest general elections: Golkar, the United Development Party
(PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
An alternative recommendation that LIPI offered was that
senior bureaucrats of a certain seniority should be allowed to
become Golkar members but not executives.
Only if civil servants had the freedom to choose a political
organization would the bureaucracy's notoriously discriminative
treatment of PPP and PDI members be stopped, the report said.
The survey, conducted in Surabaya, Manado, Jayapura and Banda
Aceh, found that civil servants' obligation to support Golkar
left their vow to treat all citizens equally as "mere rhetoric".
"The result is widespread corruption, manipulation and
primordial attitudes in our bureaucracy," said researcher Sri
Yanuarti when presenting the survey.
Leaders of the Moslem-based PPP and the Christian-nationalist
PDI have long demanded in vain that the government restore civil
servants' rights to join political parties of their choice.
Neutral
They argue that the civil servants' mandatory bond with Golkar
has seen bureaucrats favor Golkar although they are supposed to
be politically neutral.
The survey confirms that the civil servants corps favors
Golkar, which was founded by the Army in 1964 to counter the
growing threat of the Indonesian Communist Party.
Although the 1985 Law on political organizations allows civil
servants to join any political party, the guarantee does not
apply in practice because such moves would be prohibited by their
seniors.
"Civil servants who won't listen to their supervisors are
subject to punitive action ranging from warnings to dismissal,"
Yanuarti said.
The government has instilled in civil servants the perception
that they should vote for Golkar in every election if they want
development programs to continue, she said.
"Explicitly or implicitly, the other political parties (PPP
and PDI) are portrayed as 'evil spirits' in the political and
development processes," the report said.
Civil servants are mobilized to promote Golkar, especially
during elections.
"Teachers and headmasters have an additional burden to help
Golkar win the election in their respective neighborhoods. They
are supposed to persuade students to apply for Golkar
membership," Yanuarti reported.
Ryas Rasyid, rector of the state Institute for Public
Administration, said there was nothing wrong with the prevailing
system in which civil servants supported Golkar.
He said that what needed to be done was to improve civil
servants' impartiality rather than give them the freedom to join
political organizations other than Golkar.
Civil servants are pragmatic in that they choose to affiliate
with Golkar because they know the political grouping has brought
about prosperity for them and the public.
Besides, he added, their support was needed to ensure the
government remained strong -- something that all countries needed
to guarantee sustainable development. (pan)
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