INDONESIA DECENTRALIZATION:
DIRECT LOCAL ELECTION VS PUBLIC
SERVICES DELIVERY
Nurliah Nurdin
Dr.Nurliah Nurdin,S.Sos, MA is a lecture in Institute of Local
Government Affairs,
ABSTRACT
It is the function of government to
provide public utilities and services. Citizen could argue whether their government
really work or not strictly by having the basic need of society provided, such
as health care, cheap or even free education, easily to find a job, safety and
confort pedestarian, clean and healthy environment, and reliable public
transportation. Two bills of Indonesia decentralization have been implemented
as decentralization becomes the most important global trends of the new
century, yet there is still no consensus on how to design political
institutions to realize its benefits. In other side, centralization has been
blamed to prolong the nation services during Soeharto Era. However, in remote
regions and specific sectors, decentralization has meant aweaker state, more
clientelism, and continued environmental destruction. Aconceptual puzzle by academics
by question how to have Indonesia decentralization benefit both nation
soveregnty and people need fulfilled. To have a strong decentralization on
public need, is a institutional work among executive,legislative and judicative
at the national level. Further, surveilance on how local election has a strong
impact on the public services delivery. Three focuses of this paper are :
institutionalism of decentralization, the influences of local election to the
decentralization, and Local election’s perfomance on Public Services. Data and
respondens are gathered since 2011-2012 as the writer become a research expert
on Grand Design of Regional Autonomy cooperated between Minister of Home
Affairs and the World Bank and The Advisory Board of President on Reformation
of Government and Bureaucracy.
Key words: Decentralization, direct
local election, public services.
Introduction
Decentralization
in Indonesia has been written in the beginning of independence. Article 18 of
the 1945 Constitution provided for the creation, maintenance and development of
local governments in Indonesia and for the enactment of a local government act.
Then, law concerning local government in Indonesia was Act Number 5 of 1974, which
was entitled Governance at Regional Level (hereinafter referred to as the Local
Government Act of 1974). This title is intended to indicate that the
territorial division and sub divisions of Indonesia were not only administered
locally, but also nationally as well as jointly. The entire territory of the
Republic of Indonesia was divided and sub divided with regards to the principle
of deliberation and consensus in administration and the traditional rights of
the regions that have a special character according to the Constitution. This
last provision is concerned with the great diversity of people constituting the
Indonesian nation. The different ethnic cultural groups not only have their own
customs and dresses, but even languages, cultures and attitudes that vary from
one part of the country to another. This diversity enriches Indonesia's unity.
Following
the reformation momentum, the regional autonomy law No 22 Year 1999 and law of
Finance No. 25 in 1999, Indonesia has seriously implementing the regional
authomoy law and the Finances Policy. However, some problems have occured that
make the goals of regional authonomy to increase public interest fulfilled and
public services were not provided as a expectation of decentralization. Then
the revision of regional autonomy law has born Law No 32 year of 2004 which is
implemented as a better version of the previous law. Nonetheles, the
decentralization still emerge some problems expecially on the public services
delivery. Further, direct local election that enacted in 2005 as expected to be
local participation to increase the democracy values as well to provide a
better public services seems to ruin the goals of decentralization. Beside
consumpt local and national budget to conduct election, direct local election
has openly risen new problems such as local conflict that tend to be a massive
demonstration, riots and violences among candidates’s supportes, cultural and
social unrest, politization of bureucracy, the use of public budget for
supporting the election, the attention of elected head of region for public
concerns were left out and the concern of reelected and secure the position is
mostly the elites focuses instead of guaranttee the public services. This paper
is written to explore on decentralization and local election, how they are
interrelated to increase public services and how local election has partly
ruined the decentralization. How is the decentralization and local election has
a negative impact on public services delivery. To answer the question, some
studies present on decentralization concept, local election concept, the fact
of Indonesia decentralization and the relation of decentralization and local
election in providing public services institutionalism of decentralization, the
influences of local election to the decentralization, and Local election’s
perfomance on Public Services.
A.
Institutionalism of Decentralization
Generally,
decentralization has been perceived as a transfer of authority from central
government to local government with the aims to implement closer the public
services delivery. Decentralization basically is a
reduce of authority of central government to the provincial and local
government. Expecting to be closer to their constitutient then local election
was also held in Indonesia since 2005. The Regional Autonomy Laws No 25 year of
1999 and the extended revision Laws No 32 Year of 2004 were intended to have a
better local government performance in building their own regions. In other
words, these laws were meant to solve regional and local problems which will free
central government from spending much time and energy dealing with local
problems; such as number of schools needed, hospital, road, and any public
utilities. It is expected that the central government will focus thinking on
strategy and supervisory, to deal with globalization issues and to provide and
promote the best need of the country. to maintain the national integration and
most important is to guide, to supervise, to guard and to control the
implementation of decentralization.
Related
to this authority transfer, a working paper of UNDP and Germany also proposed a
definition of decentralization as stated below:
“....decentralization
or decentralization governance , refers to the restructuring or reorganization
of authority so that there is a system of co-responsibility between
institutions of governance at the central, regional and local levels according
to the principle of subsidiarity, thus increasing the overall quality and
effectiveness of the system of governance, while increasing the authority and
capacities of subnational levels...... Decentralization could also be expected
to contribute to key elements of good governance, such as increasing people’s
opportunitinies for participation in economic, social and political decisions,
assisting in developing peoples capacities; and enhancing government
responsiveness, transparancy and accountabulity
Indonesia
actually has law of decentralization year of 1974, somehow under President of
Soeharto rule, the strong centralization of any lives of government was
applied. Then, riot and demand for reformation happened in 1998, the heaviest
strikes ever occured in Indonesia that parliament stood to step down President
Soeharto. The flows of reformation then insist in four areas of changes, namely
: law enforcement, civil-military relation; regional autonomy and a support for
economic development. When Presiden Habibie replaced President Soeharto, there
have been tremendous changes have been made to answer people demand. One of the
system changed is the regulation of regional autonomy. Somehow, due to the lack
of supervisory from the central government, the decentralization has been
applied in different perspectives, not only among local governments, power
relation between local government and provincial level but also central
government and local government. For example, the head of Kabupaten/Kota make
government organizations more than the actual need.
There is proposition that electoral incentives can
play a central role in the success of decentralized delivery of local public
goods. The presence of formal local institutions, particularly electoral rules
that enable voters to reward and punish locally-elected officials, is key for
reaping the benefits that decentralization can provide. When constitutional
rules do not support electoral accountability, introducing other mechanisms of
political rewards and citizen control becomes all the more important.
However,
making local government organizations without a necessity assesment only
consume local revenue and budget including to pay all the officials expenses.
As the impacts, so many program for public services were abandoned due to the
insufficient budget, for example training for physician and nurses, training
for teachers, local economic empowernment, and other program for public
benefits.21Therefore, the law of regional autonomy in 1999 was revised and the
law of decentralization 2004 become more details in what ares that the local
government response for and what is the central government obligation. As
stated in UNDP-Germany research recommendation below, decentralization
essentially for the much benefit for the local public services.
“.... while decentralization or
decentralization governance should not be seen as an end in itself, it can be a
means for creating more open, responsive and effective local government and for
enhancing representational system of community—level decision making. By
allowing local communities and regional entities to manage their own affairs
and though facilitating closer contact between central and local authorities,
effective system of local governance enable responses to people’s needs and
priorities to be heard, thereby ensuring that government interventions to meet
variety of social needs. The implementation of strategies is therefore
increasing to require decentralized, local participatory processes to identify
and address priority objectives for poverty reduction, employment creation,
gender equity and environmental regeneration22
This
statement clarifies that decentralization is not enough by only transferring
authorities to the local government. It needs further participation of local
society to make decision. The system should assure that the effective local
government is to enable responses of people need. Therefore as one package of
decentralization is to count local society participation in the decision making
process. It is no longer applicable for any public decision inclusively only
determined by elites without people’s concern.
Role
of Central Government vs Local Government
Eventhough
the practice of local governance in Indonesia has made progress since the
reform period, as a enactment of Law No. 22 of 1999 onRegional Government. The
relationship between central and local governments become more decentralized,
except six powers that remain in the central government, most of the authority
delegated to the regions in the field of governance. In general, the law No. 22
Year 1999 on Regional Government has a lot to bring progress to the region and
also for the improvement of people's welfare.
The balance of power between central and local
government is matter to improve the lives of local society and communities. If
there is balance of power between central and local government lies, then there
lies the responsibilities and accountabilities for the delivery of improvement.
A need for central government to set and monitor national strategic goals,
while local government must have its own autonomy to shape the development of
their communities. However, as it is also statad in the research done by the
World Bank, that the actual balance between central and regional authority is
not justabout a conscious division of labour but also about concrete struggles
overpolitical and economic resources as illustrated in Indonesia, where
decentralizationhas resulted in confusion about the distribution of power
andauthority between different levels of government. Rather than a
technicalgovernance issue, the confusion stems from a tug of war between
competinginterests which has a concrete, material basis.
In the Central government, powerful coalitionsretain a
vested interest in maintaining some controlover local resources and authority
over taxes, royalties and investmentpolicy, while attempting to balance this
against aspirations for greaterlocal autonomy. On the other hand, local elites
(especially at the subprovinciallevel) are intent on taking direct economic
control, typicallyciting the injustice of past practices that allowed Jakarta
to exploitIndonesia’s vast riches. In the meantime, provincial authorities are
stuckin the middle, struggling to retain some power and not to fall into
theoblivion of political and administrative redundancy. The result: ratherthan
breaking up centralized state intervention and promotinginvestment,decentralization
has so far opened the door to a host of uncertainties whichfrighten investors.
Further,
the research also stated for cautions that decentralization ‘may not always
be efficient, especially forstandardized, routine, network-based services’.
It can also ‘result in the lossof economies of scale and control over scarce
financial resources by thecentral government’. In fact a central theme has been
a wariness that ‘weakadministrative or technical capacity at local levels may
result in servicesbeing delivered less efficiently and effectively in some
areas of the country’
central
government only has six powers over the local government, they are Foreign
Relations; Defense; Security; Judicial; Monetary andFiscal; Religion. On the
other hand, local government has been transferred 31 decentralization
authorities in addition to 8 optional authorities. Having that lots of
authorities supposedly make the local governments worked more with establishing
downward accountability to citizen levels.
Further the authorities make the local government
perform the public goods levels maximized under decentralization.
Centralization, on the other hand, produces the surplus maximizing public goods
levels only if the districts are identical. Thus, with identical districts,
decentralization dominates when spillovers are small and dentralization dominates when spillovers are large. With
non-identical districts, decentralization is still better when spillovers are
small.
One
of the most important matters in decentralization is the accountability from
local elected governments to the central government level. Transfer of
expenditures and political responsibility to the local authorities may be
supported to alleviate the burdens on the central government. It may also be a
means of more revenue generation by mobilising more local resources. This means
that decentralisation can be a “win‐win situation” for both central and local governments.
Decentralisation processes may simply provide positive development and
democratisation options which a centralised governmental system does not offer
.
Chart
1. Indonesia Central and Loval
Government Authorities
|
Central Government 6
Authorities
|
Provincial Government, Local
Government/Municipality: 31 Decentralization Authorities + 8 Optional
Authorities
|
|
6powers in the Central Government:
Foreign Relations; Defense;
Security; Judicial; Monetary andFiscal; Religion
|
31 Compulsary Action:
Social environment; Trade;Marine
and Fisheries; Forestry; Education; Health; SMEs; Workers &
Transmigration;Farms and Estates Mining; Transportation; Investment; Culture
and Tourism; Population; Empowerment of Women; Family Planning and Family
Welfare; Industry;PU;Management of space; Youth and Sports; Information and
Communication; Housing; Archives; Defense; The Unity of Nation and Politicsl;
Statistics;PUM; PMD; Personnel; Library
ProposedAction:
Marine and Fisheries;
Agriculture; Forestry Energy and Mineral Resources;Tourism;Industry;Trade,
and Transmigration
|
B. The
Influence of Local Election to Decentralization
Local
direct election in Indonesia has been implemented as extension of local
government laws ( No 32 Year of 2004) to make the public services and local
interest closely implemented.It was firstly applied in regency of Kutai
Kartanegara in June 2005. One year after the first direct election for
president and the house of represnetative member. As written in dictionary of
babylon, election is one way to make the public services closer to the need of
people. Having local executives and legislatives are elected directly
supposedly make the relation of member of representatives and their
constituents
of
no boundaries. In other words, people’s need and interest can be easily heard
by the representative and as outputs to increase people’s prosperity.
Election is the
process of voting in order to select one person from a specific group to
perform certain duties in a government, society or corporation. Local elections
are the elections held for the purpose of choosing representatives for local
government or for a county council, town or city. Elections can also be held
for the purpose of deciding a state public question.
Somehow, as mentioned
before, local election and decentralization have made the bureucracy in
patology which is only serve for elites in power. There is a swift corruption
from central government to the local government to the broad power wealth
management and financial areas as well as "money politics" that occur
in local elections.
The World Bank lists
that at least five criteria are necessary for successfuldecentralization. These
requirements are ensuring that local financial resources match theability to
provide local public services, the local community should be aware of the
costof services, the community should be able to express their desires in a
meaningful way,there should be transparency and accountability of local government
activities and thelegal and institutional system should match the political
objectives.28
All
these criterias have not been implemented as a result of direct local election
to decentralization.
The evidence shows
that public services are still minumum rate due to the high corruption as
actually increased after local election. It seems the corruption only sphered
out from central government to local government. Some research and publication
showed Indonesia was in a chronic corruption state. Corruption ranked by
Transparency International Indonesiain 2009 on Corruption Rating Index (CPI)
placed Indonesia at 111 of 180 countries in the world.While for the ASEAN,
Indonesia is ranked 5 of 10ASEAN countries, namely Singapore, Brunei
Darussalam, Malaysia and Thailandare at 1-4, while Vietnam, the Philippines,
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmarwho finished 6-10.
Corruption in local
election has a nightmare impact on decentralization. Guidance and guard to
track the decentralization and transffered power as well as authority must be redesigned.
Direct local election has made political transaction between the head of
regions with investors, businessman, bureucracy and any level of government to
be involved in corruption by bribing, preveledge trading and monopoly and using
bureucracy as campaign supporters.
By looking at a variety of
data, a major challenge to the results of recruitment political leadership
through Direct Election is to minimize the impactmoney politics that cause
negative political reciprocation before electionimmediate progress. Another
challenge is the increasing professionalism of the headareas. Formulation of
good policy is largely determined by the
understanding of the regional head of the policy formulation process that
putscommunity as a major public policy benefit designed. System of direct
election still contains the possibility of the election of regional heads less
capacity
A
recent USAID document on decentralization in Indonesia replicate that local
governments have little experience with participatory self-rule and will need
assistance to create adequate mechanisms for participation, transparency and
accountability. They also have limited technical capacities, particularly to
perform functions that have been provided by central agencies, and they will
need assistance to demonstrate to citizens that autonomy does lead to
improvements in services and the environment. Particular attention will be paid
to ensure women’s participation and concerns are included at all levels.
Then what can be done to
force elected local head of government only concern to the local public
interests as so many political transaction occured during the campaign time.
How to make any policies are responsed to the public’ need and avoid the
accumulation need of the campaign team and the business cooperation behind the
screen? The results thus far correspond to a simple model of political agency.
It requires that voters are informed of and care about the program’s impact,
and mayors with re-election incentives exert effort on program delivery in
order to increase their chances of re-election. A prediction of this model is
that first-term mayors are more likely to get re-elected in municipalities
where the program performed better. Clearly, re-election responds to the
quality of performance in a broader set of public functions which are
presumably correlated with effective management.
is
largely determined by the understanding of the regional head of the policy
formulation process that putscommunity as a major public policy benefit
designed. System of direct election still contains the possibility of the
election of regional heads less capacity
A
recent USAID document on decentralization in Indonesia replicate that local
governments have little experience with participatory self-rule and will need
assistance to create adequate mechanisms for participation, transparency and
accountability. They also have limited technical capacities, particularly to
perform functions that have been provided by central agencies, and they will
need assistance to demonstrate to citizens that autonomy does lead to
improvements in services and the environment. Particular attention will be paid
to ensure women’s participation and concerns are included at all levels.
Then what can be done to
force elected local head of government only concern to the local public
interests as so many political transaction occured during the campaign time.
How to make any policies are responsed to the public’ need and avoid the
accumulation need of the campaign team and the business cooperation behind the
screen? The results thus far correspond to a simple model of political agency.
It requires that voters are informed of and care about the program’s impact,
and mayors with re-election incentives exert effort on program delivery in
order to increase their chances of re-election. A prediction of this model is
that first-term mayors are more likely to get re-elected in municipalities
where the program performed better. Clearly, re-election responds to the
quality of performance in a broader set of public functions which are
presumably correlated with effective management.
Indonesia Condition on
Decentralization
It
is expected that the human development index (HDI) is getting better by
implementing decentralization. Since applied in 1999, the regional autonomy has
not been able to fulfllled the expectation. Indonesiais stilllagging. HDI is
stilllackbehind onpublic services.United Nations DevelopmentProgram (UNDP)
stated thatIndonesiaonly0.617of HDI. This figuredropped toposition124 of187
countries, fromlast yearranks108 of169 countries. IPMis a measure ofthe success
of developmentof a nationby looking atthreekey indicators, namelyeconomic
development, health, and education.
For
the level for Human Development Index, Indonesiaranks in the sixthlevel
inASEANwith index0.617. This position isunder theSingaporeranked26th(.866);
Brunei, sequence-33 (.838), followed byMalaysia, ranked61st(0.761), Thailand,
the order of103(.682), and the Philippines, ranking -112(0.644).The position
ofIndonesiais onlybetter thanVietnam, whichwasin the order of128 (.583); Laos,
position-138 (.524); Cambodia, order-139 (.523), and Myanmar, the rank-149
(.483).One indicator ofdecline in the indexisthe average length ofschoolingof
Indonesiais only5.8 years.
Analysing the decresing of HDI after
Indonesia applied regional authonomy, then, some questions rised, what is
decentralization for if the index of human development even lower and the
public services are not achieved by local society. Decentralization has its
advantages and disadvantages. Theoverall impact of decentralization on service
delivery depends critically on its design andprevailing institutional
arrangements.Some literatures determine on factors that are likely to
influencewhether decentralization improves the efficiency of resource
allocation, promotes costrecovery and accountability, and reduces corruption in
public services.
The literaturesuggests that decentralization may work best,
indeed may only be meaningful, if there isa local democracy; local democracy
may work best in socially and economicallyhomogeneous communities; and the
devolution of the power to tax can create verticalexternalities in terms of tax
rates that are too high. The most sensible form ofdecentralization may
therefore be to create local democratic governments, matchjurisdictional design
to communal lines, and to primarily devolve expenditures ratherthan taxes
(using transparent and formula-driven fiscal transfers).
As seen in Chart 4, there are 15 local government
expenditures on public it is only around 20 percents of the total local budget.
Another 80 percents of budgets were primarily used for offices, local
employment, and other bureucracies expenses. This imbalance expenditures for
public versus local government were the pictures of most local government
buggetary. The expectation to have a prosperity by decentralization and direct
local election will not be achieved any soon if the figure of local government
expenditure ration 80:20 percent which are 80 percent for bureucracy and 20
percent only for public need including to build road, provide health services
and educataion.
Chart 4. Local Government Expenditure on Public vs Office
|
NO
|
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
|
%
TOTAL LOCAL BUDGET for OFFICE
|
|
1
|
Kabupaten
Tulang Bawang Barat
|
76,08%
|
|
2
|
Kabupaten
Klaten
|
75,13
|
|
3
|
Kabupaten
Lampung Tengah
|
74,57%
|
|
4
|
Kabupaten
Pringsemu
|
73,35%
|
|
5
|
Kabupaten
Boyolali
|
71,66%
|
|
6
|
Kabupaten
Purworedjo
|
71,56%
|
|
7
|
Kabupaten
Mojokerto
|
71,24%
|
|
8
|
Kabupaten
Karanganyar
|
71,17%
|
|
9
|
Kabupaten
Tanah Karo
|
71,04%
|
|
10
|
Kabupaten
Kulon Progro
|
70,93%
|
|
11
|
Kabupaten
Pidie
|
70,85%
|
|
12
|
Kabupaten
Magetan
|
70,83%
|
|
13
|
Kabupaten
Bireun
|
70,62%
|
|
14
|
Kabupaten
Banyumas
|
70,62%
|
|
15
|
Kabupaten
Kuningan
|
70,27%
|
SUMARY
Some
research have been done to evaluate the decentralization impact on the
fulfilment of local public needs. There is a finding in the research of Grand
Design of Regional Autonomy40 that bureucracy has been damaged as an implication of
local direct election. Each employees is expected not to be neutral but to take
side on one to another candidates. If, for example, the major and the vice were
both running for the next election, then most of bureucrats were forced to
support one to another candidate. If then, the candidate supported won, all
good position in the office will be easily transferred to the “man of elected
government. On the other hand, if PNS has supported a lose candidate, then all
the position that they have being involved would be directly take from them. No
carrier path for PNS .
Direct
election raises many problems. Instead of producing a regional head of qualify
and effective work for the people, some elected leaders actually involved in
corruption. This condition can not be allowed because it will continue to cause
harm (adverse effects) for the community.There are six major performance to
measurea program success or failure. they are: 1)local governments should
increase their own-source revenues. Dependence on central transfers should
decrease and the local proportion of budget financing should increase after
dcentralization for sufficiency of local government. 2)government actions are
transparent and civil society is permitted to operate freely—devolution should
increase the accountability of government officials and discourage most forms
of corruption. 3) The advocates of decentralization, moreover, argue that
decentralizing the delivery and in some cases the financing of local public
goods (i.e., public goods that do not have substantial inter-jurisdictional
spillovers) improves the allocation of resources, cost recovery, and
accountability, and reduces corruption in service delivery.
Decentralization
is thought to bring government closer to the people by way ofintroducing or
strengthening the electoral process at subnational levels, the formation
ofcouncils and citizens committees, and direct participation of the users of
services and
beneficiaries
of public goods delivery. Even where not locally elected,
sub-nationalgovernment is thought to have greater knowledge of local
preferences, so decentralizationmay encourage allocative efficiency. An
efficient division of responsibilities amongdifferent levels of government
requires, however, that the role of each level ofgovernment must match its
capability, and a set of rules defining who has authority andwho will be held accountable.
These rules should be explicit and transparent.Fundamental rules are most often
spelled out in the constitution, leading to laws andregulations covering
specific implementation of the fiscal system and public goodsdelivery.
As
has been written by one of Indonesian Regioal Autonomy promotor, Ryaas Rasyid
that dealing with issue of provincial and local regulations that are considerd
in violation to the law, it should have been avoided if the central government
consistenly fulfilled
its obligation to provide guidelines, to supervise and control the
implementation. Even after the enactment of all those thousand provincial and
local regulations, the central government still as an authority to invalidate
them. If the central government dose the job excellently, then the
implementation of local election and decentralization policy could be succesful
in reaching its destination to maximaze public serivices at the provincial and
local level. It needs a lot of political will to implement the decentralization
and local direct election proportionally .
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