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Seminar: Parties stall bureaucratic reform

Bureaucratic reform in Indonesia has moved at snail's pace due to intervention by political parties and widespread corruption, a seminar heard Thursday

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Fri, May 23, 2008

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Seminar: Parties stall bureaucratic reform

Bureaucratic reform in Indonesia has moved at snail's pace due to intervention by political parties and widespread corruption, a seminar heard Thursday.

Political considerations played a dominant role in the recruitment of personnel for professional bureaucratic positions, said Miftah Toha, a professor of political science at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.

"It's even more surprising that a director general who is a career bureaucrat can be appointed through the approval of the Final Assessment Team whose members comprise political positions ranging from the President to ministers," Miftah said.

The appointment mechanism leans more toward political considerations than candidates' competence or expertise, he said.

"It's difficult to guarantee and ensure the neutrality of the bureaucracy ... It's hard to imagine how many first echelon government officials, who were appointed by ministers representing political parties, are free from the interests of those parties," he said.

Miftah was speaking at an international conference titled "Indonesia's Decade of Democratization: The Rise of Constitutional Democracy", jointly held by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), The Habibie Center and Monash University.

With no political party winning by a landslide in its elections, Indonesia's last three administrations have formed so-called coalition governments by allocating some ministerial posts to political parties for the sake of political stability.

The reform era failed to create a grand design for comprehensive bureaucratic reform, Miftah said.

What is now perceived as bureaucratic reform only concerns trivial matters, he said.

"They have only reformed little things, like changing civil servants' uniforms or office hours. The government officials should reform bigger things, like setting aside their own political interests to deliver public services," Miftah said.

He warned that political parties only needed people during elections.

"Once the elections are over, political parties will soon forget their constituents," he said.

Another speaker at the seminar, Denny Indrayana, said national leaders in Indonesia had a tendency to preserve favoritism by appointing fellow party members to government positions.

"During Soeharto's era, when Golkar won all the elections held under the New Order, Soeharto handpicked most of the House of Representatives members. Soeharto's successors have followed suit," Indonesian Court Monitoring director Denny said.

Bureaucratic reform had been very slow as corruption remained prevalent, he said, adding that it could succeed if the anticorruption drive could make an impact.

Corruption could remain widespread because the penalties for graft convicts are too lenient and fail to serve as deterrence. (trw)

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