Is Jakarta ready for greater autonomy?

Muninggar Sri Saraswati and T. Sima Gunawan The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Jakarta is a special city. It is the capital of Indonesia, the government center and also the center of industry.

In fact, the official title of Jakarta is Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta or the Special Region of the Capital of Jakarta.

As a special region, Jakarta is treated as a province and headed by a governor. Jakarta is divided into five municipalities: West, Central, East, North and South Jakarta, and one regency of Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands) -- whose status was upgraded from a district to a regency only a few months ago.

As far as regional autonomy is concerned, the Jakarta governor is given special treatment.

While Law No. 22/1999 on Regional Autonomy significantly cuts the authority of governors and gives more authority to mayors and regents, the governor of Jakarta remains powerful.

Along with preferential treatment, according to the law, Jakarta is entitled to receive the largest amount of funding from the central government annually. This year, it received trillions of rupiah, including Rp 700 million in funds allocated for various projects.

Ironically, the administration failed to manage the funds properly although the government had started to implement regional autonomy.

"The administration has failed to implement the law properly as there are no concrete positive results," said Sudarsono M., the home ministry's director general on regional autonomy.

Things remain the same -- if not worse. There is no improvement in basic public services, such as education, public health services, tap water, street lighting and electricity. Sudarsono asserted that improvement in public services was an indication of proper implementation of the greater autonomy.

The Bantar Gebang dispute, which blew up two weeks ago, is the best example of the administration's failure in managing its responsibility.

Sudarsono, whose office arranged a meeting between the Jakarta administration and the Bekasi municipality to solve the dispute, disclosed that in terms of handling the garbage problem the administration was incompetent.

"They (the administration) are technically unprepared," he told The Jakarta Post. He revealed how the top officials at the city administration were confused when asked to explain their waste management program.

Instead of striving to improve public services, Governor Sutiyoso has repeatedly asked the government to hand over assets located in Jakarta, which are currently managed by the central government.

Among them are the Bung Karno Sports Complex in Senayan and the now defunct airport in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, and the Tanjung Priok harbor in North Jakarta.

Sutiyoso also wants to manage the city toll roads, which are managed by state-owned highway company PT Jasa Marga.

Sudarsono criticized the administration's attempts to take over state assets, saying that funds given by the government as well as the city revenue are sufficient to manage the city.

Unfortunately a huge part of the money was spent to pay special allowances of the governor and other city officials as well as city councillors.

Jakarta is lagging behind compared to some other regions in its implementation of autonomy.

"The administration is quite slow in facing autonomy," said Sudarsono.

Jakarta has even been left behind by Sragen, a small regency in Central Java, which was praised by Sudarsono for its improvement in public services. The regency has delegated the authority to issue necessary permits to the subdistricts in order to cut bureaucratic procedures.

The administration had tried to give the impression that it was serious in the implementation of autonomy in January this year, by drafting a bylaw on the administration's organizational structure.

The bylaw is expected to enable the administration to properly manage its human resources.

Currently, the administration has 106,000 employees. This includes 50,000 central government employees who were handed over to the city administration following the implementation of autonomy this year.

Actually, the administration does not need additional employees. Therefore, many of them have nothing to do but still have to receive a salary. The administration has tried transferring some of them to certain offices, but it has not worked because they do not have the required skills. The fire agency, for example, once complained that the new employees were too old, while they really needed young ones who still have lots of energy and can be deployed in the field.

What is more important is not the management of the human resources but the quality of the human resources.

Human resources are indeed essential in the implementation of the autonomy as well as strong leadership.

While Sudarsono asserted that the administration's human resources have no vision for autonomy, the fact is that Jakarta lacks strong leadership.

Without the improvement in the quality of its leaders, the critics' nightmare of regional autonomy might become a reality. There could be many "little lords" who abuse their power.

The City Council, which, in a way, should control the administration, tends to side with it instead of with the public. There is not much the people can hope for from the councillors.

The people have no other choice but to be the administration's watchdog, otherwise, autonomy will only enable the authorities to manipulate their power and money.