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.