'Self-government may not foster public well-being'

Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As legislators consider 10 bills for the creation of 35 new regencies, 2 municipalities and one province in response to a nationwide clamor for autonomy, analysts warned that the localities concerned might end up poorer then before.

Calls for local self-government have risen as people across the country seek to establish governments that are more responsive to their needs. But political analyst Andi Mallarangeng said Jakarta should tightly scrutinize all such proposals.

"At the end of the day, the question one must ask is will it (local self-determination) improve public services?" Andi said on the sidelines of a seminar on autonomy organized by the U.S.- based Asia Foundation.

The rise in demand for new local governments comes on the back of the 1999 autonomy laws. Observers say the trend reflects discontent in the regions over a central government that has been siphoning off their natural resources for decades.

Jakarta hopes the autonomy laws will keep the sprawling archipelagic nation together amid the simmering threat of separatism.

Effective since January 2001, local autonomy offers local governments a greater share of their natural resources and more authority to manage their own affairs. In return, localities must become self-sufficient.

In theory, those that fail the test will be dissolved or merged, but in practice new localities have been sprouting up, and more are in the legislative pipeline.

"Centralism does not only exist in Jakarta. There's also centralism in the regions where certain elements, be they ethnic, religious or territorial based, are being left out by the rest," Andi explained.

Under Government Regulation No. 129/2000, the establishment of a new local government jurisdiction must satisfy at least six criteria, including economic capacity, local potential, cultural aspects, political aspects, demographic aspects and size. Other considerations may be added to the list based on the regulation.

Andi said a locality that lacked economic potential could later end up forcing its residents to pay higher taxes, and cutting public services just to keep its new administration afloat.

"So don't allow new local governments (to be created) just because of someone's lobbying or because thousands of protesters are demonstrating somewhere," Andi added.

A study conducted by the Asia Foundation revealed that many local governments depend excessively on transfers from the central government's General Allocation Fund (DAU).

The central government pools the DAU from local governments and returns the funds based on a weighting system under a scheme to better distribute wealth between rich and poor localities.

Paulus Kindangan, a researcher from Sam Ratulangi University in Manado, North Sulawesi, who participated in the Asia Foundation study, said that the budgets of 27 local governments relied on DAU disbursements for 75 percent of their revenues.

Local governments did manage to increase their own revenues by around 17 percent this year, but most of the additional money came from increased taxes and charges at the expense of local economies, Paulus said.

Given a frequent lack of economic capacity, some of the self- government calls may be more politically motivated, said Max H. Pohan, the director of the Bureau for Local Government Capacity Empowerment at the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas).

He said it was possible that community leaders might be stirring ethnic, religious or territorial sentiments to demand their own administrations.

"One may call these (sentiments) a national asset, but we must not let them become a reason for breaking up (existing local government jurisdictions)," he said.

"Every attempt to bring about self-government should be based on the goal of improving public services, bringing services closer to the people," Max said.