Regional autonomy 'not as easy as it sounds'

Regional autonomy 'not as easy as it sounds'

JAKARTA (JP): State Minister of Regional Autonomy Ryaas Rasyid
denied the central government was being tardy in its preparations
to implement regional autonomy, saying officials were
painstakingly drafting the necessary arrangements to make the
program workable.

"The implementation of regional autonomy is not as easy as it
sounds. It could bring less changes to regions and even become
unused if everything is done too abruptly," he said in a seminar
on regional autonomy organized by the West Kalimantan Community
in Jakarta (IKKB) here on Saturday.

Many sides, including the IKKB, have criticized the
government for dragging its feet in making preparations to
implement the much-anticipated regional autonomy.

Ryaas defended himself against the criticism, contending that
as much as it would like to, the government cannot act as fast as
many desire as the implementation of regional autonomy requires
the establishment of "strong software and hardware".

"The two laws on regional autonomy and on fiscal balance are
not adequate to be held as a legal basis for implementing
autonomy. Besides issuing a number of new regulations to enforce
the two laws, the government also has to amend many other laws to
synchronize them with the autonomy implementation. And all this
work needs a relatively long time," he said.

He cited as an example that his office in cooperation with
other ministries was drafting at least ten government regulations
to start implementing autonomy in January 2001.

"The most crucial and long-awaited is the regulation on
powersharing between the central and provincial
administrations ... The division of authority must be clear-cut
to avoid overlaps in administrative affairs," he said, adding the
regulation would be issued in May at the latest.

Ryaas also said he and Minister of Finance Bambang Sudibyo
would issue five regulations to enforce the fiscal balance law,
regulating, among others, negotiations on sharing profits from
natural resources and on cross-subsidies from resource-rich
regions to less developed ones.

The government will also revise the 1982 law on spatial zoning
and the 1974 law on regional administrations to make them
consistent with the planned decentralization of much authority to
provincial administrations.

Ryaas said that despite the deadline of Jan. 2001, the
implementation of regional autonomy would partly depend on the
readiness of the regions themselves to carry it out.

A full implementation of regional autonomy will be conducted
only in provinces and regencies, which, if seen from the
perspective of their human resources and managerial skills, are
considered prepared, he remarked.

He said that under developed provinces such as Aceh and Irian
Jaya may not be ready to fully implement regional autonomy.

According to Ryaas, such provinces would likely only be
delegated a certain amount of authority of which they had been
assessed as able to handle.

"To me, regional autonomy is not an efficacious medicine to
treat political and economic problems in provinces because it
depends much on their own preparedness to implement it," he said.

He suggested local administrations immediately begin
recruiting qualified personnel to fill the high demand for
skilled officials in the bureaucracy.

Asked about the role of the police in such a system, Ryaas
remarked that they should shift their main deployment away from
urban centers to maintain security and order in rural and remote
areas.

"Police should no longer be concentrated in urban areas,
especially provincial capitals, because their presence will be
much needed in rural and remote areas," he said.

In Saturday's seminar, many West Kalimantan figures called on
the government to give special autonomy to the province in
compensation for the over-exploitation of its natural resources
and damages to its environment in the past.

Ryaas said at the most the government could give special
treatment to help redevelop its forests and local culture. (rms)