House plans to revise autonomy law
House plans to revise autonomy law
Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
To be consistent with the newly enacted law on direct
presidential election, the House of Representatives will propose
the direct election of regional heads in its draft revision of
the Regional Autonomy Law.
House Commission II on legal and home affairs has set up a
team to draft the revision, focusing on this particular issue.
The government had submitted its draft revision of the law,
but it accorded too much power to the president to intervene in
the election of regional heads, thus prompting the House to
develop its own draft revision.
Deputy chairman of Commission II Ferry Mursyidan Baldan said
on Thursday that the team was still evaluating the implementation
of regional autonomy and seeking inputs from regions in order to
develop the draft revision.
Declining to provide further details on the evaluation, Ferry
said his commission would propose several pertinent ideas,
including the direct election of regional heads, to alleviate the
negative impacts experienced in the three years since regional
autonomy was implemented.
"The team will present the results of our evaluation as
important inputs for the commission to take into consideration in
preparing the draft revision," he said.
Ferry added that direct election of governors, regents and
mayors were expected to help develop democracy and maintain
regional political stability.
Gubernatorial and regental elections have raised numerous
problems, including cases involving bribery, and have disrupted
political stability in a number of provinces and regencies.
"If governors, regents and mayors are directly elected by the
people, such bribery cases can be avoided and political
conditions in regions will be relatively more stable," Ferry
said, adding that the election of regional heads conducted by
regional legislatures was only one of several complicated issues
that had arisen with the implementation of regional autonomy.
Ferry said that besides the regional head elections, his
commission would also propose the establishment of administrative
borders to prevent conflicts between provinces, between regencies
and between regencies and mayoralties.
"The unclear administrative borders have given rise to issues
on administration income and natural resources, which have
frequently become the source of conflicts between provinces and
regencies," he said.
Director General of Public Administration and Regional
Autonomy Oentarto was unavailable on Thursday to comment on the
issue.
The government proposed that the law be reviewed only a year
after regional autonomy was implemented on Jan. 1, 2000.
It had also proposed the annulment of thousands of conflicting
bylaws that do not support regional autonomy, while issuing
hundreds of regulations to cope with problems caused by its
enforcement.