'Regional autonomy on the wrong track'

Sari P. Setiogi and M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The implementation of regional autonomy has turned both provincial and regental legislatures into oligarchic entities eager to fight for their own interests, a survey says.

A five-year survey chaired by noted sociologist Daniel Sparringa showed that local legislatures were also prone to anarchy.

"There are five big groups of people's perceptions to regional councillors," Daniel Sparingga said on the sidelines of the VIII National Congress of Science 2003.

The first was that regional counselors were prone to oligarchy practices.

"They misuse people's trust to serve their own interests instead of the people's interest," said Daniel.

Many such cases had happened in the country, such as the suit and traveling budget requested by the Jakarta City Council recently.

People saw such practices as the regional counselors' effort to enrich themselves.

Another image was that regional councillors in most cases were becoming free-floating elite as they were not attached to the community they were supposed to represent.

"They become insensitive and careless with many real problems faced by the people in their regions."

He also said that local councillors were prone to becoming "moral brokers" as they were forcing certain value among the people, although the values were not wanted by the community.

As an example, he mentioned the tendency of some regional councillors to close amusement places during the fasting month and establishing sharia law.

"The regional councillors are also sometimes developing anarchism by issuing regional laws that are not in line, even sometimes contrary, to existing laws. It happens particularly with economic-related laws," said Daniel.

Anther criticism directed at the regional councillors was that most members were acting as aliens instead of speaking with the same 'language' as the community. As the result, people would feel isolated from their councillors.

The research was conducted by Daniel over the last five years across the country, from Sabang in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam to Merauke in Papua.

Separately, Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno said, after regional autonomy had been implemented for three years, that the central government was alarmed by a tendency of a number of local administrations to manipulate the newly found power for the benefit of their respective regions.

He told members of the House of Representatives' Commission II on legal affairs that a number of local administrations in resource-rich regions claimed the full ownership of natural resources, while disregarding the plight of neighboring poor provinces and regencies.

"To make things worse, the natural resources were later controlled by certain majority ethnic groups in the region. This easily fuels resentment from disenfranchised ethnic groups and such a condition might trigger clashes between the two," he said.

Hari also cited a number of cases where local administrations imposed regulations that were meant simply to enrich local leaders.

The central government has been under fire, especially from foreign investors, saying that the regional autonomy policy was confusing and gave rise to too many local regulations that placed additional burdens on their companies.

The minister said that due to the distortion in the implementation of the regional autonomy law, the central government was determined to revise the law despite opposition from the regions.