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.