INDONESIA 1997-1999
Post Crisis and the need for
intervention
Paper by Prof Johan Silas
the rational
i.
street hawkers & slums
If a person can sell on a sidewalk or built a house in a marginal area,
to them this ensured that food or shelter be available to the family members.
To them this is a solution, an
honorable act that does not rely or expect assistance or subsidy from anybody.
No law prohibits such an act.
Not so to the government that regards the existence of street hawkers or
slums is sign of failure and disgrace; a
big problem. The other way round applies, meaning that if street hawking
or slums are not permitted, it is a disaster
to the respective families.
The problem is never focussed to the good act of the people, but the
place where that the act is performed. Being poor is the reason for a person
not able to provide a proper place to do the act of looking after the family.
Hence the existence of street hawkers and slum is not the willing mistake of
the poor but the failure of local governments to perform the mandate given by
the people.
ii.
people’s politic
The past election in Indonesia taught us important
lessons. It proved that the people are ready and matured to implement a real
democratic way of life. The political elite and experts showed that they cannot
match the example given by the people. Now they are again given a test to reform
the constitution and elect a President that can bring the people and the country
into a new and better live.
the context
When the economic and financial
crisis hit Indonesia in mid August 1997, international community came to assist
to deal with the crisis. According to the scenario proposed by IMF, Indonesia
will deal with the problem in four stages, rescue, recovery, reconstruction and
growth of the economy. The experience in South Korea and Thailand, showed that
if political stability can be achieved soon, both the first stages can be passed
rather early, such as the case of South Korea and Thailand. In the same time
frame Indonesia should also pass the first two stages in the first part of this
year. However, due to a weak government, Indonesia has to deal many problems one
after the other. The last was the Bank Bali corruption issue and the killing in
East Timor. It is only after a free and fair presidential election (now under
way) will a stable political atmosphere be achieved and economic recovery
passes.
The crisis itself is not new to
Indonesia nor the world. The world recession in the late twenties is only one of
the many crises that happened before or afterwards. In fact the crisis in Latin
America culminating in Mexico in the eighties and the burst of the Japanese
economic bubble early nineties was never taken as a serious lesson to the
dramatic yet unrealistic economic growth in this region. It was only taken into
account after it was too late and the crisis has very hard. Indonesia has
experienced the worst impact of the crisis.
The economic and financial
crisis in Indonesia can essentially be distinguished in three inter locking
stages. The panic stage is when every body loss confidence to the government and
tried to buy and horde almost every things, especially those that have unlimited
ability to dispose a large sum of money. To deal with this situation government
introduced the rescue package by providing cheap essential goods to the people.
The second was the adjustment stage that should happened very short, can be far
less than expected. Just before the last June election, the crisis entered into
the present accommodation stage, indicated by people getting ready to restart
the economic to grow on their term again. These last two situations have been
overcome by recovery actions, by regulating the stock of essential goods.
Although the urban scene does not show any indication of the crisis as in the
first two stages, yet the economy has not moved ahead as expected. Food centres
are crowded at weekdays as well as weekends. Surprisingly, ordinary people can
afford to buy music disks for karaoke singing or VCDs that daily crowd the many
hawker stands selling pirated (by Taiwan) CD/VCD at not cheap price, beyond the
expensive equipment needed to play them.
There are urbanization and
social lessons to be learned from the economic growth and the crisis that
followed. The dilemma condition created cities after high economic growth and
development with weak base, have been conducive to the extra hardship created by
the crisis. Social contradiction can be seen in the exclusiveness
among the upper class in increasing numbers, to the cohesiveness of the lower
class that is still significant. The second lesson is the contrast of fragmentation between the egocentric
of the upper class to the communally grouping of the lower class creates social
tension that can explode for little reasons. The other lesson deals with the
great increase in individual capacity, though not in an egalitarian manner. In
essence the contrast is between a dynamic and independent middle class to the
less mobile communal groups that in certain cases have to resort to the
primordial approach. It should also be noted that the formation of partnership
among public and private stakeholders is interesting phenomenon.
local
autonomy
Prior
to the election, the parliament has passes two important laws, on local
government (no.22/1999) and balanced distribution of national income
(no.25/1999). In principle, the political authority and resources will now be
mainly concentrated at local level. Until now, tow third of the money in
Indonesia is controlled and circulated in Jakarta; hence Jakarta received the
worst impact of the financial crisis. Starting the fiscal year 2000 (April),
Jakarta will only handle one third of the national income, most to service loan
taken so far, including to overcome the crisis. It is however important to deal
in more detail on the substance of the local government law. In grief the main articles of the law are as follow:
Article
4 (2) local government is basically
independent and does not have hierarchical relation among each other. In this
respect, local government consist of the provincial government, regency (with
rural area) and cities (urban only).
Article
7 (1)
the authority of local government consist of all governmental power
except authority in foreign affairs, security and defense, judiciary, monetary
and fiscal, religion and other area.
(2)
Authority
in other area consist of policy in
macro national planning and development control, financial balance fund (to
support area with little local re4soiurces), state administration system and
economic institutions, human resource development, utilisation of natural
resources and strategic hi-tech, conservation, and national standard.
Article
18
the right and responsibility of local parliament
among other are :
·
Electing
head of local government and his/her deputy,
·
Enacting
local bylaws
·
Formulating
local budget, etc.
Article
46
If the accountability of the annual development policy and budget is
rejected and given thirty days to improve and still rejected, then the local
parliament can dismiss the head of the local government
Since the enactment of the
local government law, government officials can only be appointed from civil
servant corps. This eliminates the possibility of military personnel to take
civil function or duty. Cities will have civic forums to deal with the
aspiration of the civic society. A governor has also very limited authority that
of resolving problems that deal with the interest among regencies and/or cities.
It can temporarily take over functions that have not been undertaken by the
regency or city. A governor is also representing the interest of the central
government based on devolvement of power. It is true that in the constitution
Indonesia is a unitary country. However, the new local government law in
practice makes Indonesia more federalists than a federal state as seen in the
power of the President and the Governor. If this proves to be working, a new
model for strengthening local democracy need to be introduced.
Another important feature of
the local government law is THE provision of nineteen articles on village
authority. Villagers (only in Regency area) according to this law have the power
to elect their chief and council, but also enact the budget, collect tax and up
hold the customary or traditional law. This strengthened the existence of
traditional villages that still exist in may parts of Indonesia, including in
Bali. These acts also provide the legal opportunity for villagers to reclaim
their right to land and forest that is a integral part of the livelihood. In
most previous law, especially the basic law of the forest (no.5/1968) their
right have been revoke and create problem of hardship to the people. However, in
urban area village is not recognised. Therefore in the government regulation
that deal with the organisation of city government, a provision is made to
establish development forum for urban population to deal and decide on their
affair and priority in development. UNDP showed interest to support the scheme
of strengthening urban stakeholders to deal with the issue. Our group in
Indonesia have been very instrumental in the setting up of the urban forum model
(to include Peter Swan).
after the
crisis
Three
important situations have happened after the crisis. First the openness and free
expression of opinion and freeing the press from government (plus military)
control. The second is the screening between the real and fake ones in
development; the professionals and non-professionals actors in many respects;
and corrupt and the honest ones in public office. The door is now wider open to
reach a clean and professional government within the good governance idea. It is
now up to the people as the stakeholders to use of the new opportunity and to
make sure that it does not reverse to pass practice. However, the road to a new
Indonesia is far from easy and smooth. The need for resources to achieve is
another constraint that is need wider support. The greatest problem faced by
this nation is the habit created by the pass government of being guided and
assisted from above; and the heavily centralized government. This is now up to a
few stakeholders in the society those have the concern, willingness and ability
to make the change possible and sustain. To some extent ACHR
can be instrumental in achieving this goal if it can be made into a regional
movement as support, implemented and adapted to respective local condition in
other parts of ASIA.
Another
feature of the crisis is the implementation of various social safety net
schemes. From creating work opportunity, to saving the health and education
aspects of live. In the panic stage, SSN (locally known as Jaring Penyelemat Sosial-JPS) was haphazardly implemented creating
huge waste of fund and opportunity. It was accused of being used as money
politics by certain political parties. However, the election result showed that
ordinary people cannot be fooled anymore with such kind of moves. The parties
involved in the money politic received very little political support by the
people at the last election. Now a
new concept have been introduced where the people first organised themselves in
order to be able to set the priority for the project element and responsible for
its implementation. External involvement is reduced to the minimum supervised by
local NGOs and student from the universities.
Along
with the SSN programme, KIP for the last two years have been improved to become Comprehensive
KIP that stress the community development aspect over the physical
improvements before. Local people in the kampungs now organized themselves in
order to make their own decision how and what to do with KIP. General guideline
was given assisted by local NGO. The programme (assisted by IBRD) provide about
three packages of project each about Rp 200 million (US $30,000) for physical
improvement, home based economy and home improvement. The SSN scheme under the
Directorate General of Human Settlements for housing will be implemented in line
to the Comprehensive KIP model; meaning that the project need the approval and
will be managed by local community. Laboratory of Housing and Human Settlements
of ITS has been assigned to implement training for the implementing team of SSN
programme among public officers, consultants and local community. This is
another important step ahead made possible by the crisis.
new
directions
An
interesting finding have been reached by the people in the kampungs due to the
crisis. Only during the panic period do people in the kampungs suffered. They
then were able not only to adjust to the new situation, but they see new
opportunity to fill the economic gap left by the inability to import certain
goods, such as steel moldings, wood and leather work, etc. The Home Based
Enterprises studies carried out by the Laboratory for Housing and Human
Settlements of ITS showed that HBE has flourished by the crisis in term of
quantity and quality as well as income.
The
new direction of urban development and urbanization in Indonesia obviously will
follows in three main direction, namely a people power in urban affairs,
people’s based development and the introduction of new ideas through
globalization networking. A close collaboration between NGOs, the academe and
the professionals need to be strengthened to become an effective partner in
urban development to the local government and people’s representatives. To
achieve this end, there need to be developed an urban scale forum for horizontal
and vertical deliberations among stakeholders and kampung development broad and grassroots
level in the kampungs. Here again the scheme need not to adopt a reinventing the
wheel approach. It is important that organization such as ACHR played a more
proactive and innovative role.
Prof
Johan Silas
Surabaya,
1 October 1999
