Workshop questions Indonesia's autonomy laws

The School of Oriental and African Studies in London held a workshop on Southeast Asian politics on July 7-8. In this and the accompanying article, Santi W.E. Soekanto of The Jakarta Post gives her report on the discussions on Indonesia.

LONDON (JP): The new Regional Autonomy and Fiscal Balance Laws may fail to answer the growing demands for devolution of powers because they are flawed and may have been drafted in ways that defeat their purpose, scholars concluded.

"Good intentions, but bad laws," according to Gary F. Bell, a legal expert at the National University of Singapore. While acknowledging that Indonesia's survival might depend on satisfying the pressing demands for regional autonomy, Bell contended the laws were "flawed, unclear and contradictory."

In addition, the May 7, 2001 deadline for implementing them was unrealistic. "I fail to see how the regional governments will be ready, the transfer of infrastructure and personnel completed and the financing put in place (by that time)," he said.

"(Indonesia) is heading for a disaster unless the implementation is delayed and the laws and regulations are amended," he said

Economist Anne Booth of the School of Oriental and African Studies and management expert Shafruddin Hashim of the University of Brunei Darussalam also discussed the current regional crisis in Indonesia during the workshop.

Hashim pointed at the need to abolish or amend 1,200 regulations that the central government has been using to control the regions, before the new laws can be implemented. He also criticized the government's decision to determine the structure of autonomy for each region on a case by case basis.

"This indicates not only a highly differentiated approach among the regions but also that 'autonomy' continues to be viewed as a prerogative of the center rather than a regional right," Hashim said.

Booth contended that "it is still far from clear that the current administration has either the political support or the power to pass the enabling decrees which will make the laws operational."

"On the one hand, the resource rich provinces will push for a greater share of the profits from oil, gas and forestry exploitation that (the new autonomy law) currently grants them," she said. "On the other hand, powerful vested interests at the center will try to prevent even these provisions from being implemented."

"It is far from clear who will win this tug of war, or indeed which party Gus Dur and his immediate circle favors," she said, referring to the popular name of President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Article 7 of the Regional Autonomy Law states that "the powers of the regions cover all sectors of government responsibility except for foreign affairs, defense and security, the administration of justice, monetary and fiscal matters, religious affairs and responsibilities in other sectors."

Further, "the responsibilities in other sectors mentioned (above) include policies on national planning and the control of national development at the macro level, funding for fiscal balance, the state administrative system and state economic institutions, the development and the empowerment of human resources, the efficient use of natural resources along with strategic high technology, and conservation and national standardization."

The implementation directives (PP) that were adopted by Abdurrahman's administration recently, however, were poorly drafted and confusing, Bell said.

The regional autonomy regulations do not provide details on the powers mentioned in the law and the areas of authority mentioned do not correspond with those covered by the law.

"For example, some of the sectors mentioned in the directives include the agricultural sector, the mining and energy sectors, and the forestry and plantation sectors-which are not mentioned in the law," Bell said.

"The government has not informed us exactly which headings these reserved powers come under ... are the powers over the energy sector reserved because they concern 'policies on national planning and the control of national development at the macro level', 'the efficient use of natural resources' or 'strategic high technology'?"

In many fields where the regions had high hopes of becoming autonomous, he said, "they will end up being simply the implementers of central government policy if the PP is anything to go by." He pointed out that in the area of natural resources, "the role of the central government is almost all-encompassing under the regulation."

"Many regions will be disappointed," he added.

The law adheres to the principle of residual powers -- provinces have only the powers that are specifically granted to them while the rest belong to the regencies and districts. This might in the end leave regencies and districts with even more powers than the provincial governments, thus creating an asymmetric distribution of powers, Bell said.

The regional autonomy law stipulates that the powers of the provinces as autonomous regions also include the powers which have not, or have not yet, been exercised by regencies and cities.

"We won't then be able to rely on the law to know whether the province or regency concerned has power over a specific area," he said. "We will need to ask whether a regency or a city has exercised that power. If it has exercised the power, it has that power. If not, then the province has that power."

"This is a mess," Bell said. "The powers of the provinces, regencies and cities will depend on the actual exercise of power, not on a delegation of powers by law. This means that the deal could be different in each and every province, regency and city."

"If these two legal instruments are implemented without amendments we are heading for confusing times in legal and business circles," he said. "More importantly, I fail to see how the distribution of powers provided for by these instruments will satisfy the political and economic desires of the regions."

Aceh and West Papua, he cited, would not be satisfied by this "maze of distribution, delegation and appropriation of powers which, at least in principle, grants the most important powers not to Aceh but to its eight regencies and two cities, not to West Papua but to its nine regencies."

Bell contended that the Regional Autonomy Law fails to delineate clear procedures for the approval of foreign investment, and the modalities for the transfer of infrastructure and personnel to local authorities.

The law also lacks provisions to protect mobility rights and to prohibit discrimination based on ethnicity, non-residence and other factors. Finally, the law does not have sufficient protection against corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN) and money politics.

The scholars also discussed the new Fiscal Balance Law, which has been widely thought to have addressed provincial discontent over the issue of the financial bleeding of the regions.

Acknowledging that Indonesia has one of the world's most centralized fiscal systems with a reported 89 percent of all revenue flowing to Jakarta, Hashim expressed doubt that the new Fiscal Balance Law would ease that discontent. This, he said, was because the planned financial flow-back is aimed at the regency level rather than the provinces themselves.

Booth agreed, pointing out that by empowering the regencies and districts, the two laws could be seen as an attempt to preserve the current unitary state by weakening the power of the provinces.

Hashim and Booth agreed that a small number of provinces which are rich in natural resource -- namely Aceh, Riau, East Kalimantan and West Papua as well as agriculturally-rich South Sulawesi and Maluku -- stand to gain most from the new fiscal arrangements.

"Whether these four provinces will be able to use the money productively is, of course, another issue," Booth said. "Some have argued that the new law will simply lead to the decentralization of KKN."

"Not surprisingly, the loudest critics within Indonesia of the new legislation are those central government officials, for example in the National Planning Agency (Bappenas), whose lucrative empires, carefully built up over the Soeharto era, will collapse if a process of genuine decentralization is implemented."

Hashim pointed to the 1999 sharp rise in world oil prices. "If high oil and rising commodity prices are sustained then these few provinces will far outpace the more numerous, less endowed regions," he said.

Booth, however, warned that natural resources wealth is fast declining. Gas reserves in Aceh, for example, are expected to be exhausted within 10 years. "This fact alone may persuade cooler heads in Aceh to reject complete independence," she said.

"If Jakarta can persuade Aceh and other regions that their longer-term interests are best served by remaining within the Indonesian state, much of the current clamor will probably die down," she said.