http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/more-inclusive-development-could-end-regional-disparity/562447
More Inclusive Development Could End Regional Disparity Ida Ayu Cintya | December 19, 2012 In the not-so-distant past, Indonesia was governed by an authoritarian, centralized system of government. It was a system that ruled successfully — for those who benefited at least — for 32 years. Indeed for the 50-plus years from independence until the year 2001, when the first local autonomous law was published, local governments in Indonesia were not given the opportunity to manage their own regions without guidance from the center. But when change came about in 2001, it came fast. Before they knew what to do with it or what it meant, provincial and district governments had power, increased funding, and an empowered local parliament. What has been the upshot of this rapid — some even call it “big bang” — rush to decentralization? A quick scan of the newspapers highlights some of the negative consequences. The constant corruption cases, the failures of the new regions to benefit from their autonomy, and the citizens in the newly autonomous regions who remain below the poverty line top the list. Perhaps we should not be too surprised about the record of local governments since for over 50 years, knowledge of what good governance meant had been kept from them. The central government, we can imagine, had a hard time transferring its knowledge to local governments because it had no idea on how local governments were supposed to work. Is it any wonder that the civil servants who spent years implementing central government plans, seemed lost when they were given the task of making decisions and delivering services to their people? When you add the temptation of increased funds at their fingertips, regional governments were forced to ask for additional time when asked to deliver fair local elections. But not all of the regions began at the same starting line. Some regions have vast natural resources, or historically strong ties with Jakarta, or had an already strong governance record even before the decentralization. To further complicate matters, Indonesia is a sprawling country with hundreds of ethnicities and local languages, varying levels of human resources and geographical issues that add up to a biased race toward the successful decentralization ideal. But to its credit, no other country in the world has decentralized as quickly as Indonesia. While there is no fixed set of what constitutes the ideal model, one still wonders why the process was not undertaken in a more orderly fashion. Politics and a fear that the country might have disintegrated after the financial crisis might be the main reason. One interesting feature of Indonesia’s specific form of decentralization was the process of pemekaran, or blossoming. A number of regions blossomed but not their skills in governing themselves. Depending on a variety of factors, by 2025 Indonesia could have as many as 80 provinces. But if we evaluate the regions based on the improvement of their services, we will find 80 percent of those new regions to be failing. As a result, in the latest revision of the decentralization law the central government has put a lot of emphasis on strengthening the implementation of Minimum Service Standards, to try to guarantee a standardized service to the people. Nowadays local governments have to implement more than 600 norms, standards, procedures and criteria from 15 different sectoral ministries which have their own challenges. While all of these requirements have been set in place since last year, it would seem that different local governments, with their different capabilities, will have different levels of success in implementing them. One way to improve poor service, however, is to create incentives for its delivery. Fortunately, Indonesia has a myriad of awards in this area. These include the Innovative Government Award, the Indonesia Green Region Award, the Workforce Development Index Award, the Award for the Increase of National Rice Production (P2BN), the Adhikarya Pangan Nusantara Award, the Public Works Award (PKPD-PU), the One-Stop Shop Investment Award (PTSP-PM), and the HIV/AIDS Reduction Award. There are even awards for regions that are successful in conducting the distribution of e-identity cards. There is also the annual evaluation done by the central government. Despite the numerous awards given out, it is almost always a Javanese district or province that snatches the top two places, making one wonder what is going on outside of Java. Now that the second decade of decentralization is upon us, is it time to realize that there will always be differences in perceptions, capabilities and inequalities in the regions? After all there have always been differences of opinion between the central and local governments. One of the more memorable examples in recent times was when heads of districts took to the streets to demonstrate against the central government’s change in policy of doing away with subsidized fuel. If we do need to create incentives, perhaps it should be done in a manner that is fair to all. This could be in the form of clustering the awards so that each corridor or group of islands would have a better chance to win, thus giving them recognition, appreciation and motivation to strive harder. Surely there is a stark disparity between regions in Indonesia. The GDP per capita of the richest district was 113.5 times higher than the poorest district in 2010. So rather than just trying to reduce inequality, it would also be good to make development more inclusive. This is encapsulated in the World Bank’s World Development Report for 2009, which acknowledged that large cities will always be more attractive as jobs and more exciting things always seem to happen there. It will be impossible to avoid the disparities between urban and rural areas so the next round of decentralization is likely to create even more. Local governments should not stop trying, however, as practice makes perfect. Ida Ayu Cintya is a researcher at Strategic Asia, a consultancy promoting cooperation between Asian nations. She can be contacted at [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
