Candidates fail to address 'crucial' autonomy issues: Analysts

Erwida Maulia ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 07/03/2009 3:03 PM  |  Presidential Election

While praising the three presidential candidates for their commitment to pluralism and national unity, observers say they failed to address crucial issues about the country's regional autonomy during Thursday night's presidential debate.

Fiscal decentralization, assisting the functions of regions and sharing authority between three levels of the government -- deemed to be at the heart of problems in regional autonomy implementation -- were barely discussed.

Counterproductive bylaws and the looming threat of the independence movement in Papua were barely touched on.

And so were other issues such as budgetary planning and health and education services at the regional level.

This was revealed in a discussion presenting the views of representatives from regional autonomy watchdogs that are part of the Working Group on Regional Autonomy.

The discussion was held shortly after the last-round presidential debate on Thursday night, which was themed "The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, Democracy and Regional Autonomy".

Novi Anggraini, from the Regional Administrations Innovations Institution (YIPD) and a member of the working group, said that with limited time, not all problems could be addressed.

"But they could have incorporated important issues like financial decentralization during their [7-minute] vision-mission presentation," Novi said.
   

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