Future regents from ABRI must be brigadier general

Future regents from ABRI must be brigadier general

JAKARTA (JP): Military officers who assume the position of
regional administration leaders should at least be a brigadier
general, Minister of Administrative Reforms T.B. Silalahi said
yesterday.

Briefing the press after meeting President Soeharto, Silalahi
reiterated the government's campaign for more regional autonomy
in order to cut red tape dependency on the central government.

Silalahi said the plan to give more autonomy to regional
administrations will start next year. President Soeharto is
expected to launch the drive on April 1, 1995.

The campaign includes a plan to improve the quality of leaders
at regional level administration, Silalahi said. Currently,
regents or city mayors are normally appointed from civil servants
at the third top echelons, or from chiefs of local military
districts.

"In the future...military officers to be appointed regents
should at least be colonels, who will later be promoted to a
brigadier general when he assumes the post," Silalahi said. "That
means the military ranks of governors or vice governors should be
higher."

The minister argued that the greater the responsibilities
regions have in development, the more burdens that regents have
to bear.

"Regency or municipality is like a miniature of Indonesia," he
said. "Civil or military, we need more qualified regents."

If the regents come from the Armed Forces (ABRI), "the higher
their rank is, the more experienced they are," he said. "Paris
once had a mayor who was a former prime minister."

While some regions on the Island of Java have started
implementing the policy, the government hopes that at least 50
percent of all second level administrations in the country's 27
provinces implement it by the end of 1999.

"Hopefully, we can then see how our development efforts
proceed with larger autonomy," he said.

Lax

The government's drive to establish more independent regional
administrations began 20 years ago, but the implementation has
been lax. As a consequence, numerous development projects in
regional administrations had to suffer because the regional
leaders failed to take initiatives.

"The implementation of development projects in districts is
not smooth, because of too much involvement by the central
government," he said.

The plan means that all leaders in a regional administration,
from the governors down to district chiefs and village heads have
the authority to make decisions they see as appropriate when
carrying out government policies.

"The head of the district knows what is best for the area
under his administration. The central government will assist by
providing the guidelines," he added.

Silalahi said district heads or regents would issue some of
the licenses currently granted by the central government for such
things as small-scale trading, mining, hotels and other
enterprises.

But he said security, defense, court, religious and financial
matters would remain the purview of the central government.

In spite of the increasingly intensive campaign for more
regional autonomy in the last several years, many government
leaders are still reluctant to take initiatives for fear of
making the wrong decisions.

Director General for Regional Administration and Autonomy
Sumitro Maskun said earlier this month that such an attitude
often results in government policies being implemented in a rigid
fashion.(swe)