Councillors: Who exactly do they represent?

Councillors: Who exactly do they represent?

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The 75 city councillors have been in office for almost 18 months,
long enough for them to illustrate commitment to their election
pledges.

When they were inaugurated on Aug. 26, 2004, more than 1,000
people demonstrated outside the City Council building to remind
them of their election promises -- clean governance and improved
welfare for the public at large.

The demonstrators, mostly urban poor, were in particularly
calling on the new councillors, who were directly elected in the
2004 elections, to promote clean governance.

They handed the city councillors a dustpan and a broom --
signifying their wish for the councillors to get rid of
corruption, collusion and nepotism, known to be commonplace in
the council and city administration.

"The new councillors must not engage in collusion, corruption
or nepotism," said Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) coordinator Wardah
Hafidz during the demonstration.

Other protesters called on the councillors to pay attention to
the lot of poor families in the capital, urging that more funds
be allocated for programs that benefit the poor. Indeed, under
the existing system, city councillors have the right to allocate
funds from the budget proposed by the governor.

One-and-a-half years later, however, the expectations of
Jakarta residents -- clean governance and improved welfare --
appear to have been too high for city councillors to fulfill,
despite the fact that most of the 75 city councillors are still
new in politics and thus presumably not contaminated by the old
practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism. Most of them are
also members of political parties that ran on an anticorruption
platform in the 2004 legislative election.

Instead of considering how to serve their constituents best,
the councillors have since their early days in office been busy
fighting for short-term party interests.

The councillors, for example, spent almost three months
fighting over chairmanships of council commissions overseeing
development projects in the capital.

Most of the factions in the council fought, for example, to
chair Commissions D for development affairs, which supervises
agencies tasked with carrying out most development projects in
the capital.

It is public knowledge that some councillors ask for projects
from the city administration.

Governor Sutiyoso has always refused to admit outright that
city councillors ask for projects, saying only that he receives
reports from many officials about such practices.

The councillors have also been criticized for their lack of
discipline in carrying out their daily tasks.

Plenary sessions and commission hearings are often delayed
because councillors not only arrive late at the meeting venue but
also to the office.

Council speaker Ade Surapriatna promised that the City Council
would deliberate and endorse one or two new bylaws or revisions
to existing bylaws every month.

However, the council has so far produced only three bylaws
this year -- one on regional fees, one on a Betawi cultural
village and another on air pollution control (PPU).

On budgetary function, the council has twice deliberated city
budget drafts -- for 2005 and for 2006 respectively -- but like
other activities in the council, the budget deliberations often
took place behind closed doors, a practice that has long been
criticized by corruption watchdogs because of the lack of
transparency.

Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) coordinator
Arief Nuralam says closed-door deliberations makes it impossible
for the public to learn what transpires during the discussions.

Budget deliberations, he says, have to be open to the public
as it concerns the interests of the populace as a whole.

If the councillors have made any achievements, then it must be
its role in revealing alleged corruption in the Jakarta General
Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta), for which its chairman
Muhamad Taufik, member A. Riza Patria and treasurer Neneng Falupi
have been charged.

The case has been forwarded to the Jakarta Prosecutor's
Office, which has completed its investigation and submitted the
case file to the South Jakarta District Court. The trial should
start early next year.

This achievement, however, pales in insignificance amid
allegations of rampant irregularities within virtually all city
agencies. It is also insignificant for councillors who earn
between Rp 18 million and Rp 23 million a month, even more so
considering Sutiyoso issued a regulation this year that makes it
possible for each of them to take home up to Rp 70 million per
month.