Two articles and a photograph on Saturday’s front page sadly and inadvertently painted a picture of the government’s dysfunctional process of policy development and implementation. The first article announced that the supply of “Premium” subsidized fuel might be exhausted by early November.
The article stated that the government was “considering” a vague plan to control distribution through a “clustering mechanism” but provided little detail as to what such a mechanism would consist of or how it would be implemented. Despite a lack of clarity regarding the mechanism, BPH Migas, a government agency, saw no harm in ordering Pertamina to implement the system starting on Oct. 1, i.e., in two weeks.
For its part, Pertamina, a state-owned enterprise, stated that it was ready to implement the as-yet unknown policy. One wonders how the government has been caught in the position of surprise at the imminent exhaustion of gasoline supply and why it had not put more and earlier thought into developing a policy to address the looming problem.
The article suggests that citizens should be prepared to suddenly and without explanation have yet another new “policy” dropped unannounced on them. The second article describes the likely significant disruption on freight traffic into Tanjung Priok, the country’s main commercial port, caused by the collapse of one of the three roads that lead into the port. While reports indicated that the cause of the collapse may be due to soil erosion, a contractor working on a road maintenance project stated that they did not check the road’s land contour because such a task was not included in the contract document.
One would think that such a check, especially in a coastal area with a high water table and poor soil, would be standard operating procedure. The Public Works Ministry’s response included a statement that they planned to inspect all national roads near the coast. As usual regarding government responses to disaster, this sounds like yet another case of “shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted”.
Finally, a photograph showed a darkened Soekarno-Hatta International Airport with a caption that stated that power had been lost on Friday. I believe that this is at least the fourth time that power and/or radar service had been lost at the country’s largest international airport. Previous failures over the past several months have led to acrimonious exchanges between the airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II, again a state-owned enterprise, and electricity company PLN (surprise, another state-owned enterprise). PLN has indicated willingness to “take over” management of the electrical supply at the airport. PT Angkasa Pura has promised to invest in new systems.
Is it too much to expect that the government, through the Transportation Ministry one of the coordinating ministers, should sort out conflicts and the lack of coordination between the two enterprises and address abysmal conditions at the airport, even when the electricity is on?
Taken together, the three pieces suggest a government that is unable to “think and plan ahead”, fails to understand the basic precepts of sound policy development and implementation, relies too heavily on “cash cow” state-owned enterprises and condescendingly assumes that its citizens are prepared to accept sudden and radical government-imposed changes to their lives.
Joel H. Friedman
Program Coordinator
ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Program II
The ASEAN Secretariat
Jakarta
The opinions expressed are personal.
