UMY Expert Urges Public Oversight to Strengthen Land Services
Yogyakarta (ANTARA) - Muchamad Zaenuri, a Governance Expert at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY), believes that public oversight is essential to strengthen transparency and accountability in land services across Indonesia.
Speaking in Yogyakarta on Friday, Zaenudi stated that monitoring land services cannot rely solely on internal bureaucratic mechanisms, given the high number of reported agrarian issues and ongoing investigations into alleged corruption within the land sector.
“In the broader paradigm of governance science, the government is not the sole actor. All public affairs are no longer the exclusive domain of the government; there has been a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’,” said Zaenuri.
He explained that the current paradigm of governance demands collaborative and adaptive relationships between the government, civil society, and the private sector.
The Indonesian Ombudsman recorded 23,596 public reports related to the agrarian and land sectors throughout 2025, with 1,495 of those reports directed at the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN).
Furthermore, in September 2026, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) conducted investigations into alleged bribery and gratification regarding the processing of Building Use Rights (HGB), including tracing suspected illegal payments within the East Java Regional Office of the BPN.
In light of these conditions, Zaenuri emphasised the importance of implementing the concept of community-based governance so that the public has access to information and adequate oversight mechanisms.
“Although the Ombudsman currently exists, its scope is very broad. If there were oversight more specifically focused on land matters, it would be much better,” he noted.
He added that the involvement of the public and the private sector in governance must remain oriented towards the public interest and be protected from collusive practices that harm the state.
“If the public and private sectors collaborate on improper matters, it is counterproductive to a democratic nation. All parties need to remind one another so that bureaucratic authority is not used excessively,” he said.
Zaenuri urged for bureaucratic reform in the land sector to focus on the creation of public value, ensuring that services are measured not just by compliance with administrative procedures, but by their tangible benefits and the sense of justice felt by the community.