Regional autonomy

Regional autonomy

In the beginning was the desire to stem the growing current of
separatism that was increasingly being articulated in the wake of
the downfall of the old Soeharto regime. After Aceh, where a
stubborn separatist movement had been festering for decades,
popular demands for autonomy, if not full independence, arose in
several other regions of this vast archipelago, unhappy with the
government's neglect of their local interests in favor of
Jakarta's.

Occasionally, a sense of racial identity aggravates such
feelings of injustice springing from economic and social
imbalances, as is the case of Irian Jaya, or Papua. Elsewhere in
the country where separatist tendencies were not so openly aired,
"regionalism" expressed itself in different ways. The rejection
and grisly killing of settlers of Madurese origin in a number of
places in Kalimantan, for example, is still fresh in everybody's
memory.

Of course there is nothing wrong with people in the various
regions demanding that the government pay greater attention to
their welfare, which, they feel, should at least be commensurate
with the share of revenue their regions contribute to the
national coffers. Such is the case, for example, with Riau, where
a group of leading community figures, presumably small, openly
declared their separatist aspirations.

For Indonesia, however, which has long prided itself on its
success in forging the hundreds of different ethnic and racial
groups into one single unified nation, such breakaway sentiments
are understandably difficult to take. It goes to the credit of
the reformists in this country's new administration to have
realized that suppression of such sentiments, as was practiced by
the New Order regime under Soeharto, was not only no longer
possible in a democratic Indonesia, but it did not solve the
problem either.

Hence the introduction of a new law, known as Law 22/1999,
shortly after the reform movement began to grant the various
regions greater autonomy, albeit still under the umbrella of a
unitary republic. However, as it turned out in practice the
hastily drafted law leaves many problems hanging in mid-air.
However, the government's proposal to review the law is being met
with strong opposition from regional councillors and leaders, who
see the move as being part of Jakarta's efforts to reclaim its
lost powers.

President Megawati Soekarnputri, for her part, has insisted
that revisions are needed in order to correct some "fundamental
flaws" inherent in Law 22/1999. Those problems, she insisted,
were related to "our statehood and nationhood". Among the
revisions proposed is reportedly one that empowers the president
to intervene in the affairs of local legislative bodies in
certain cases or even disband them.

Lashing out at what she termed the "excessive and ridiculous
regionalism" in recruiting civil servants in some regions --
meaning the refusal of some regional authorities to accept people
from other regions as civil servants or provincial officials --
the president said such an attitude would eventually constrain
the performance of regional administrations and hurt the country
as a whole.

There seems to be little doubt that revisions are indeed
needed as more inevitable flaws come to light in the execution of
Law 22/1999 to correct such unwanted regionalism. However, care
must be taken that this does not mean a return to the old
centralist system of state administration, which is at the core
of the regions' unease over the move.

It can also be added that in good part the whole controversy
over whether or not a revision of Law 22/1999 is needed springs
from Jakarta's own ineptitude in selling the idea to the public
and to the regions. In addition, the shortcomings in the
execution of regional autonomy spring from the fact that the
local legislative councils, the DPRD, are the result of somewhat
flawed general elections.

For the present, what is most needed is for the government,
together with the House of Representatives, to formulate a set of
transitional regulations and amendments to expand on some of the
stipulations contained in the existing law. The problem is that
the nation cannot wait until a new and improved general election
law is passed to ensure that regional autonomy is implemented
more effectively.