County Creation : Destructive Potential in Constructive Expectation

Autonomous Region in Indonesia

      Indonesia is very large and complex organization. Looking at this conditions from all sides, it would be more efficient if the political and administrative authority is not only placed at the top of the hierarchy, because it create a heavy burden that will be covered by the central government. Therefore, decentralization be a logical reason why the local government exist. As a consequence of this option, the local government had given full authority by central government on politic and administration to manage their territory. We call the this transfer of authority with name local autonomy, the freedom of people whose living at that county to arrange their local affairs. It have been set up and running with Law 23/2014 about Local Government as rule foundation.

      There was a lot of the effects in local government practice, among of that is desirous to split the region which known with county creation. Establishment a new administrative area whether it from province or regency/city. The law give them (the county that wish to split) wide space for the process so libido of create county much more bigger.

Previously, certainly first need to know what things that required in order to create an area. Law No. 23/2014 has explained. It consist by administrative, technical, an phisical territory requirements. Administrative conditions that should be have to create a county is the approval of Local Heads and Local House of Representatives who will be the section of new area, as well as the recommendation of the Minister of Home Affairs. Next Technical requirements, which form from basic factors to establishment a region, like economic capacity, regional potency, socio-cultural, socio-political, demographic, landmass, defensiveness, safety, and others factors that allow implementation of local autonomy. The last, the physical conditions to split area is the new county must be have at least 5 regencies/cities for a province, at least 5 districts for a regency, and 4 districts fora city. Beside of that, there are the candidate of township, facilities, and infrastructure to run governance.

    But, it dosn’t mean that if a county area has met the conditions, whether in administrative, technical, as well as phisycal, the county’s creating would be happen. There is a special conditions again, that is a minimum age limit of government run governance. To create province, it need 10 years, and seven years minimum for regency/city.

      These issue rise various arguments to the surface. There was always to kind of persons, with positive and negative view. Some people think that county creations is need to improve public services, increase law, safety, and order, accelerate of democracy’s growth, accelerate of manage of potential resources, and increase the economic development because the central of local goverment is getting closer.

      In other hand, some people think different. They belived that the strong desire to split the county not only like ideal reasons earlier. Even as a result of creation, so much turbulence happen cause by different opinions at various county. They considered that might there was a ideal reason in background of county’s creation. Still, there was something on it, like political interest, for example political conspiracy of the lost candidat in Local Election, and to create a new available positions in county that already created.

       The high political lust which tend to push plan for divide power ta the local level, often blinding the local political elite about objective conditions, realities, capabilities, and capacity of county which need to split. In addition because of the guarantee fund transfer from central to the local, the political lust also thrives because of the law has wide county creation space to given. The law instead tend to encouraging county creation than merger of county.

       Outside of this case, be a new local autonomus ( Daerah otonom baru-DOB) isnt easy. Although DOB get general allocation fund ( DAU ) and special allocation fund ( DAK ).in the fact, those DOB isn’t easy to developed quickly. There are many heavy challenges and issues which faced by DOB or we can call new local government, begin from its human resource of bureucracy and legislative at low, government facilities and infrastructure are minimal, government management capacity isn’t sufficient, education at low level, until conflicts on boundaries area.

      Facts show that many DOB tend to be underdeveloped area and failed to qualify the essential objectives of the county creation. It increase long list of disadnvantage counties amount. In other words, public service remains poor, social welfare didn’t increase, and local democracy poor too. Minister of Home Affairs moreover asses that county creation which occured up until now has not been satisfied human welfare. Based on the government evaluation result , there is 70 percent of the 205 new local government has failed.

    So far, the evaluations conducted several organizations, both government or non government showing that county creation tend give negative rather than positive. Some of that cause by four reasons. First, the political aspect highest than objective aspects. Second, county creation makes a large structure that resulted heavy burden in financial. Third, local government tried to improve local revenues in various ways causing by low fiscal capacity, and the impact are harm citizens and led to the emergence of teh gap. Fourth, the growing number of local government simutaneously increse, so it also increase amount of local National Revenues expenditure and then the country imposed.

     Empirical studies also display that create a county isn’t positively correlated toward economic progress and not able to drive DOB’s development. The faced problems of new local government showed clearly that county creation isn’t always an answer to improving the quality of public services and welfare. Especially on today’s era information technology, geographic constraint are became blurly. The main things are weakness of law enforcement, political will, the political elite commitment, and stakeholder to work hard in the interests of the people and not the personal political interests or the groups only.

      By looking at the number of DOB’s failures, its necessary for government to temporarily county creation through binding legal framework and it must obeyed by all parties. It needs to be done while waiting for the ratification of the revision Law 32/2004 which is being discussed by House and Government.

     It is important for central government (Ministry of Home Affairs) to inform all region that impact of the county creation will make parent county get DAU and DAK fewer. So it similiar with other issues, such as taking down and give half of human resources, natural resources, and economic resources to the dob. A lot of parent county still didn’t know yet, and finally it lead rise long political shocks and conflict with DOB.

  The welfare isn’t merely about physical closeness among society with their local government, but more of that is a matter of bureucratic management and local government organization work to provide public services. There are many people though live in the city didn’t obtain adequate service, especially purilieus.

      In a course of the local autonomy implementation in Indonesia, emerging issues that require repair effort both in rule subtances as well as technical application in the vocation. The important issues that urgently to be solved are ( MoHA, 2010)) :

1. In the 2009, have formed a new county as much as 205 area consistingof 7 provinces, 164 regencies and 34 cities. In other words, it increasing 64% from previous year 1998 or average there was 20 new DOB birth every years.
2. The number of new county has implication toward the amount of new local autonomy development fund which allocated from National Revenues. In 2002 Rp 1,33 Trillion was allocated for DAU, in 2003 Rp 2,6 trillion, and 2010 Rp 47,9 trillion.
3. Several facts which found is the new local autonomous just have very little population, moreover there is a new regency just have less than 12.000 inhabitants. Another facts is human resource quality as local government personnel was minimal. The lack of government infrastructure and local conflicts that caused by boundary issues.

      Essence of create county actually is shortening the span of control between policy makers with the public and to create aqutable development. So thats ideas clearly needs to consider and can’t be directly defeated because based on certain objective factors, a number of area need to split. Still, a seriousconsideration must be done so at the future no more new complicated problem appear. Don’t let public and gvernment expectations to be better fall and worse because of unpreparedness or interest groups. Especially, county creation not have impact on Unitary State of Republik Indonesia (NKRI).

References

Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembagan Otonomi Daerah. 2005, “Sinopsis Penelitian: Efektifitas Pemekaran Wilayah di Era Otonomi Daerah”, Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Departemen Dalam Negeri.

Direktorat Otonomi Daerah. 2005. “Evaluasi Kebijakan Pembentukan Daerah Otonomi Baru, Kajian Kelembagaan, Sumberdaya Aparatur dan Keuangan di Daerah Otonomi Baru”, Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional (Bappenas).

Http://amzulian.fh.unsri.ac.id/index.php

Http://rubrikbahasa.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/pemekaran-wilayah

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