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)