Regional Autonomy Law: What Do You Want To Reach?

After 25 years, law number 5/1974 is changed by law number 22/1999. Among this period, the old law doesn’t bring positive effects in encouraging the autonomy of local government. In other words, law number 5/1974 regulates many aspects of centralization rather than decentralization aspect. As the result, central government has an excessive power or authority, while local government can only follow what central government says. Those conditions are dramatically changed now. Since law number 22/1999 is issued, central government’s power reduces significantly. In contrast, district/city government has full autonomy, and province government has limited autonomy.

This policy has a good impact, but at the same time it has two bad impacts. From the positive perspective, it gives a big chance for local government to build their self-determination by their own capacity. On the other hand, it causes not only in omitting hierarchical relation between province and district/city government, but also in emerging local arrogances. In addition, local arrogances may broaden a conflict between central and local government, and also among local governments. Unfortunately, we haven’t a formula that can be used to solve the problems yet. It means that law number 22/1999 produces some difficulties, due to un-readiness of the governments. As a matter of fact, law number 22/1999 is not better than law number 5/1974.

Jakarta, February 2001