State Policy Guidelines obselete, needs update

Bambang Nurbianto and Abu Hanifah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The 1999 State Policy Guidelines (GBHN) that the People's Consultative Assembly will use to evaluate the Megawati government are outdated and need revising, observers say.

Many of the assumptions used to make the guidelines are no longer relevant because major changes have affected the global economic and political scene, they said.

Fachry Ali of the Research Institute for Indonesian Business Ethics Development, said GBHN was no longer relevant because the government's policy had been very much dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through the Letter of Intent (LoI).

Fachry said that the Assembly should revise GBHN and think of a long-term development strategy when Indonesia no longer relied on IMF.

"Over the next few years, the government will still concentrate on the LoI with the IMF, which is probably just as tough as making State Policy Guidelines. Therefore, from this year on, MPR will have to think about a long-term development strategy," Fachry told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

The Assembly has obtained a lot of input about the national development strategy, he said, citing one document proposed by alumni of the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University.

The State Policy Guidelines were adopted in the 1999 Assembly General Session. The guidelines were drafted with very high expectations that the then democratically elected president Abdurrahman Wahid would have the capacity to pull Indonesia out of the deep crisis, improve law enforcement and overcome security problems.

Twenty months later, in July, Abdurrahman was ousted due to incompetence. The economic crisis only worsened.

Under President Megawati Soekarnoputri, Indonesia's economy has not yet shown signs of improvement. Worse still, the global economy has suffered a recession following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America.

Fachry stressed the need to have a new national development strategy which allowed greater participation of the people. At present, the development strategy remained top-down.

"We know that when thousands of people take to the streets, the rupiah will plunge. It will seriously affect our economy. Unfortunately, the demonstrators do not really care because they hardly benefit from the fruits of development," he said.

Sri Sumantri, a constitutional law expert from the Bandung- based Padjadjaran University, said the Assembly should go back to the drawing board and review unrealistic targets set within the guidelines.

"We should adjust the target. Make sure that the target is not too high for the government to achieve," Sri told the Post on Wednesday.

One of the economic targets laid down in the guidelines is that the government should speed up economic recovery in order to normalize the real sector.

Tommi A. Legowo of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is also of the opinion that GBHN needs to be revised.

Tommi, who heads the CSIS's socio-political development department, said the 1999 GBHN was a revision of the guidelines issued in the previous year.

But the question is whether the Assembly has the will to review it now as GBHN will be effective only until 2004.

"Many people know that our State Policy Guidelines are outdated but it seems that the Assembly does not have a sense of urgency in reviewing them," Tommi said.

According to Tommi, it is still possible to make revisions, but the Assembly should prioritize selected parts which are urgent in the context of the current situation, such as the ones on the economy.

"It is impossible to start rewriting it all over again," he said.

Satya Arinanto, an expert on constitutional law from the University of Indonesia, proposed that the revision of the guidelines be put on the agenda of the current session.

"I don't know whether GBHN has been put on the agenda yet," he said, adding that if it was not updated, the government would find it difficult to set its development priorities.