Good governance

Good governance

State Minister of National Development Planning Ginandjar Kartasasmita's oration after receiving his honorary doctoral degree from the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta last Saturday reminded us of the basic requirements for good, effective governance in today's world.

Ginandjar noted that a good, efficient state bureaucracy should develop transparency and accountability and should guide, instead of controlling, and empower instead of providing to the public. He also stressed the importance of enhancing grassroots initiatives in development and the need for the government to always take sides with the economically, politically weak segment of society.

Every major policy that affects the interests of the general public should be debated openly first, before it is enforced, he said in citing an example of how transparency and accountability should be translated into the daily conduct of governance.

There is actually nothing completely new in Ginandjar's observations. But there are, we think, at least two factors that made his observations newsworthy.

The first was the mere fact that those principles that are so basic to good, effective governance, were pointed so bluntly by a member of the core of policy makers within Indonesia's bureaucracy.

The second is the stark reality that those principles are still in the early process of being applied to the daily conduct of governance in this country. And the process seems much slower than required by the changing environment.

After more than 25 years of steadily high economic growth, 10 years of accelerated economic and bureaucratic reforms and privatization, which have transformed the private sector into the locomotive of the economy, the state bureaucracy still tends to think and act as if it remains the most knowledgeable about everything.

That attitude often hinders meaningful dialogs with the people. Policy making and decision making are often done without a dialectic social process because most bureaucrats think they know best and, therefore, see policy debates as a waste of time. The consequences, though, as we have often noted over the past few years, are that the government sometimes makes unnecessary mistakes that could be avoided through open, reasonable policy communication.

Such an attitude seemed to have been tolerable between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, when the government was in such a hurry to catch up in the development of the economy, which was at that time in such a devastated condition.

But now because the economic base has broadened, economic activities are governed mostly by market forces and the private sector has assumed the role of the engine of growth. Therefore, the state bureaucracy is required to transform itself structurally, functionally and orientation-wise.

We understand such a transformation is not easy because it means sharing more power with the people. But in today's world, openness and transparency are crucial for efficient market operations. And, efficient markets depend on good information, as does the exercise of freedom to participate in economic and political decision making.

Moreover, openness is essential for a soundly based public debate of the performance of a government and its agencies. And informed policy discussions are at the heart of a healthy political process, which is required to enhance sustainable development.