Reforming the State Secretariat

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): It's lonely at the top, and even more so when one is no longer there, as former presidents will testify. The ones nearest to the top, identified by their "RI 1" presidential number plates, are also prone to bouts of post-power syndrome, including those from the State Secretariat.

At the lucrative office, almost each employee used to have "his own field to cultivate," a reporter covering the office said. He recounted the changes in attitudes among those who came and went, along with the three most recent presidents.

Trimming the overstaffed office and dealing with those remaining will be the major hurdle for the inexperienced newcomers, lecturer in politics Mahrus Irsyam told The Jakarta Post last week.

Public administration expert Warsito Utomo noted, "Only those at the top are new. Their staff, however, will find it hard to break old habits."

Bondan Gunawan, secretary of government supervision and state secretary, told legislators last month that his staff would be reduced by some 1,400. Mahrus said there were pensioners whose service terms had been extended up to five times.

Bondan said the President's secretaries were consulting with their respective staff on where they could best be placed "according to their skills." Legislators, who summoned the secretaries on Feb. 17 to explain the President's confusing policies and statements, reminded them of the hurt caused to civil servants through the drastic closure of two ministries days after President Abdurrahman Wahid entered office.

Throughout the years, the "greedy" State Secretariat, first targeted non-ministry institutions, then the handling of bills, then state assets like those under the state-run Kemayoran Development and Control Board -- which led to chronic land problems -- and finally the purchase of military equipment, Mahrus wrote earlier in Kompas.

To support these functions the staff at the office were awarded complete facilities and higher incentives compared with regular civil servants, Mahrus said, "in return for loyalty to Soeharto".

The bills imposed on the rubber stamp legislative bodies, largely drawn up at the State Secretariat, were one cause of the republic's "destruction," professor of constitutional law Ismail Suny told Tempo magazine.

The office should no longer be the "superministry" it once was, both new secretaries and observers say. Its vast powers will have to be drastically cut so that the State Secretariat returns to its function of only handling matters "around the palace," Mahrus, who teaches at the University of Indonesia, said.

Revamping the state secretariat is equal to starting bureaucratic reforms from the heart, "and the new state secretary seems to have grasped this," Mahrus told the Post.

President Abdurrahman was quoted as saying that the State Secretariat should no longer be mixed up with presidential functions, "or it will be a state within a state".

Bondan has been given six months to revamp the State Secretariat, which ideally should be staffed by career bureaucrats, legislators were told at the hearing on Feb. 17.

Legislators questioned whether the office would still have the same powers as before, which even included issuing permits for aspiring overseas students and arranging the promotions of middle-level civil servants. For those in far flung provinces, including teachers, this meant a long wait for more recognition and better pay.

"There were so many presidential decrees drafted by the State Secretariat which took over the authority of the House of Representatives," legislator Aisyah Amini said at the hearing.

Bills, such as the one on consumers' rights, could get stuck for more than 10 years at the State Secretariat on unclear grounds. "There should be a clear limit on the length of time bills and decrees are processed at the State Secretariat," Warsito said, to avoid past allegations of the office "buying" and "selling" such regulations.

In the wake of the controversy over the state security bill, former state secretary Moerdiono said last year he had withheld the draft bill on state security for 10 years, given its sensitivity.

"What right did he have to do that?" Ismail said. The State Secretariat should only deliver the bill to the House of Representatives for discussion, he added. The delays encountered by bills at the State Secretariat has greatly contributed to the country's weak bill drafting process, he added.

With such power, the state secretariat became a source of corruption. "The practices of levies still continues," said legislator Sophan Sophiaan, who said his party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, still had to pay a certain levy for a function involving the State Secretariat even now its chairwoman was Vice President.

The military's dual function also extended to the State Secretariat. Ismail, who was once jailed for a year for criticizing Soeharto, said such abuse of power became worse after civilian ministers "were replaced by people like (retired officers) Sudharmono and Moerdiono."

Bills drafted at the State Secretariat became "authoritarian," Ismail said. The concept of having more members of the People's Consultative Assembly appointed than those elected was one example, he added.

The State Secretariat, said political observer Marsilam Simanjuntak and now the Cabinet secretary, should be the part of the president's office that maintains the state's consistency.

While others assisting the president were political appointees like himself, who would leave when the president chose them to or when a new one was elected, "the state secretary should be a career bureaucrat to guarantee consistency of the state whoever the president is," Marsilam told legislators.

Whether the State Secretariat would again become a "superministry", legislator Sutradara Ginting said, would greatly depend on the President. The issue now is how this office can become a transparent public management institution that no longer interfered with ministries, he said.

"It would then be clear whether the State Secretariat is an administration concept or a tool of power," Sutradara added.

The changes to the office, Marsilam added, were meant to delegate part of the State Secretariat's powers "horizontally", to other ministries, and "vertically", to governors and other regional administrators.

The State Secretariat functions to mediate with the president as head of state, while the Cabinet secretary assists the president as the country's chief executive officer, he said.

"So don't ask us for accountability; we are the product of the President's policies," Marsilam said. The new post of secretary of government supervision, he added, would be to monitor the implementation of the decrees.

"We're beginning to see a division of labor now," Mahrus said.

"The State Secretariat must no longer be the center of political intrigue," Mahrus said. He once wrote that the office used to be the hub of Soeharto's household matters, and "the meeting place of the business interests of Soeharto's children and grandchildren, of officials' offspring, of the interests of various ministries and of government and private interests."

An example of the latter, a reporter said, was the so-called "Shaking Hands Inc." or "P.T. Salaman": the syndicate within the secretariat that arranged for the president to shake hands with hundreds of guests and have their photographs taken, for around Rp 75,000 each.

"They were quite cross when Soeharto, in recent years, refused to shake so many hands," the source said. It isn't quite clear whether Soeharto was ever aware of this practice.

Mahrus suggests that the President's current secretaries work out among themselves who their coordinator should be.

Failure to reform this body, he says, will lead to the "tragic" drama of champions of democracy entering the bureaucracy and getting trapped into old mistakes. Newcomers Marsilam and Bondan were fellow activists with the President in the Democratic Forum, which was critical of the government.