THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT

Local Government

Government administration is processed through descending levels of administrative subunits. Indonesia is made up of twenty-seven provincial-level units. In 1992 there actually were only twenty-four provinces (propinsi), two special regions (daerah istimewa)--Aceh and Yogyakarta--and a special capital city region (daerah khusus ibukota)--Jakarta. The provinces in turn were subdivided into districts (kabupaten), and below that into subdistricts (kecamatan). There were forty municipalities or city governments (kotamadya) that were at the same administrative level as a kabupaten. At the lowest tier of the administrative hierarchy was the village (desa). According to 1991 statistics, Indonesia had 241 districts, 3,625 subdistricts, 56 cities, and 66,979 villages.

Since independence the nation has been centrally governed from Jakarta in a system in which the lines of authority, budget, and personnel appointment run outward and downward. Regional and local governments enjoy little autonomy. Their role is largely administrative: implementing policies, rules, and regulations. Regional officialdom is an extension of the Jakarta bureaucracy. The political goal is to maintain the command framework of the unitary state, even at the cost of developmental efficiency. Governments below the national level, therefore, serve essentially as subordinate administrative units through which the functional activities of Jakarta-based departments and agencies reach out into the country.

In the early 1990s, there was neither real power sharing nor upward political communication through representative feedback. Real feedback occurred through bureaucratic channels or informal lines of communication. Elected people's regional representative councils (DPRD) at the provincial and district levels had been restored in 1966, after operating as appointive bodies during the period of Guided Democracy. However, the DPRDs' participation in the early 1990s governing was extremely circumscribed because the councils lacked control over the use of resources and official appointments. Even though 1974 legislation gave provincial DPRDs some voice in selecting their governors--DPRDs could recommend appointments from a list of potential candidates submitted by the minister of home affairs--provincial governors were still appointed by the president. District heads were designated by the Department of Home Affairs.

The structure of provincial-level and local government in Indonesia is best understood in terms of the overriding goals of national political integration and political stability. At the governmental level, integration means control by the central government, a policy that was in part conditioned by historical experience. At independence Indonesia consisted of the shortlived federal RUSI (1949-50). The RUSI was viewed as a Dutch plot to deny authority over the entire country to the triumphant Indonesian nationalists. Regional rebellions in the late 1950s confirmed the national government's view that Indonesia's cultural and ethnic diversity required tight central government control to maintain the integrity of the state. Political stability was equated with centralization and instability with decentralization. Civil control was maintained through a hierarchy of the army's territorial commands, each level of which parallelled a political subdivision--from the highest regional command levels down to noncommissioned officers stationed in the desa for "village guidance." Lateral coordination of civilian administration, police, justice, and military affairs was provided at each provincial, district, and subdistrict level by a Regional Security Council (Muspida). The local Muspida was chaired by the regional army commander and did not include the speaker of the local DPRD.

Added to the political requirement for centralization in the early 1990s was the economic reality of the unequal endowment of natural resources in the archipelago and the mismatch of population density to resources. The least populated parts of the country were the richest in primary resources. A basic task of the national government was to ensure that the wealth produced by resource exploitation be fairly shared by all Indonesians. This goal meant that, in addition to Jakarta's political control of the national administrative system, the central government also exercised control over local revenues and finances. Thus, the absence of an independent funding base limited autonomy for provincial and local governments.

About 80 percent of total public expenditure in the provinces was disbursed from the national budget controlled by departments and agencies headquartered in Jakarta. Of the 20 percent administered by the provinces, about half came from Inpres (Presidential Instruction) grants for infrastructure and other developmental purposes. Beginning in 1969, the Inpres grant programs at provincial, district, and village levels channeled about 20 percent of the development budget to small-scale projects for local development, with an emphasis on roads, irrigation, schools, and public health. Only about 10 percent of regional government revenue was derived from local taxes and fees.

Whereas once the central government's transfer of wealth from resource-rich provinces to people-rich provinces had been a source of political irritation for the better-endowed regions, by Repelita V (FY 1989-93), the lag in development investment beyond the Java-Sumatra western core was the most troubling. Suharto's 1992 New Year's message to the nation explicitly addressed this problem: "We are also aware," he said, "of the fact that there is a wide gap in the progress achieved by each region in our country, especially between the western and eastern part of the country." In looking to future policy, he added that there would be stepped-up efforts to provide autonomy and decentralization. Such steps, however, would require strengthening the capacity of subnational units financially and administratively, as well as strengthening local participation in the setting of national goals and policies. To some government leaders in the early 1990s, making concessions to economic and cultural claims for autonomy would endanger national unity. Conflicting interests of politics and administration presented special problems in the Special Region of Aceh and Irian Jaya and Timor Timur provinces.

Aceh

Aceh is the westernmost part of Sumatra and the part of Indonesia where the Islamic character of the population is the most pronounced. The Acehnese demand for autonomy, expressed in support for the 1950s Darul Islam rebellion, was partially met by the central government's acceptance of a "special region" status for the province in 1959, allowing a higher-than-usual official Indonesian respect for Islamic law and custom. This special region status, together with growing prosperity, brought Aceh into the Indonesian mainstream. This change was reflected in the growing support among Acehnese for the central government, as indicated by votes for Golkar in national elections. In 1971, Golkar won 49 percent of the region's vote; in 1977, 41 percent; and in 1982, 37 percent. By 1987, however, with 51.8 percent of the vote, Golkar obtained its first majority, increasing it in 1992 to 57 percent. Nevertheless, during the early 1990s, the idea of an independent Islamic state was kept alive by the Free Aceh (Aceh Merdeka) movement, known to the central government as the Aceh Security Disturbance Movement (GPK). Thought to have been crushed in the mid-1970s, the guerrilla campaign of the insurgents, under the leadership of European-based Hasan di Tiro and with Libyan support, renewed its hit-and-run warfare in the late 1980s, hoping to build on economic and social grievances as well as on Islamism. ABRI reacted with crushing force and, as it sought to root out the separatists, civil-military relations were imperiled. But moderately pro-Golkar 1992 election results suggested there was no widespread alienation in Aceh.

Irian Jaya

Irian Jaya, the former Dutch New Guinea or West New Guinea, remained under Dutch control after Indonesian independence in 1949. A combination of Indonesian political and military pressure and international efforts led to an October 1962 Dutch transfer of sovereignty to the United Nations (UN) Temporary Executive Authority, which was supported by a military observer force that oversaw the cease-fire. In May 1963, full administrative control was handed over to Indonesia. After a 1969 Act of Free Choice, the territory, which the Indonesians called Irian Barat (West Irian) until 1972, was integrated into the republic as Indonesia's twenty-sixth province. Rich in natural resources, Irian Jaya (Victorious Irian)--as the province was renamed in 1972--in 1992 was the largest and least-populated province. Indonesia's efforts to exploit the resources and assimilate the indigenous Papuan and Melanesian populations into the national administration and culture met sporadic armed resistance from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and aroused international concerns.

Although the OPM became a marginal domestic actor, more visible as an international symbol, the fact of its existence justified an intimidating Indonesian military presence in the province, where suspicions about Irianese loyalties led to abuses in the civil-military relationship. Cultural differences between Indonesians and the indigenous population and complaints about the Javanization of Irian Jaya exacerbated tensions. The cultural conflict was aggravated by indigenous people's perceptions that they were being left behind economically by a flood of Indonesian immigrants coming in via the central government sponsored transmigration program. Native-born Irianese also resented the so-called spontaneous immigrants who dominated the informal sectors of urban economies. International critics of Indonesian policy in Irian Jaya accused the central government of waging a kind of demographic genocide.

East Timor

East Timor, the former Portuguese Timor, was incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia in 1976 as Timor Timur Province, although Portugal never recognized what it saw as the forcible annexation of its former territory. This incorporation followed Indonesian armed intervention in December 1975 in a reaction to a chaotic decolonization process and the declaration of the Democratic Republic of East Timor in November 1975 that had led to civil war. From Jakarta's point of view, this state of affairs held out the alarming prospect of a communist or radical socialist regime emerging under the leadership of the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin). Moreover, Fretilin's rhetorical invocation of kinship with other Third World communist revolutionary movements raised the specter of a national security threat. Jakarta formalized its takeover of East Timor in July 1976 after the Indonesia-sponsored People's Representative Council requested that East Timor be integrated into Indonesia as a province. The human cost of the civil war--Indonesian military actions and the famine that followed--was heavy. Estimates of Timorese deaths because of the conflict between 1975 and 1979 range from 100,000 to 250,000. The ability of Fretilin to mount a low-intensity resistance, the draconian countermeasures adopted by Indonesian military forces against suspected Fretilin sympathizers, and charges of Indonesian aggression against East Timor combined to make the problem of the status of East Timor a continuing foreign policy problem for Indonesia in the early 1990s. For many individuals and nongovernmental organizations, as well as for some foreign governments, Indonesian policy in East Timor became the touchstone for negative attitudes toward the Suharto government. Internally, however, Indonesia considered East Timor an integral part of the unitary state, a status that, despite foreign criticism, was non-negotiable.

On paper, East Timor in 1992 conformed administratively to the general Indonesian pattern. In fact, however, de facto military rule existed. For ten years, Jakarta-appointed governor Mario Carrascalão, a Timorese committed to integration, sought to moderate interethnic conflict and resolve intra-Timorese divisions among indigenous political parties. Carrascalão called upon the Timorese people to understand that there were only three political groupings in Indonesia: Golkar, PPP, and PDI. Although the central government invested heavily in Timor's development with more Inpres funds per capita than any other province, resentment of Indonesian rule persisted and was growing in the early 1990s. The problem of integration in Timor was similar to that of Irian Jaya: the imposition of Indonesian political culture on a resistant population. Although Indonesian officials insisted that opposition to Jakarta's rule was confined to Fretilin hardliners, other forces were at work in ways that aggravated a sensitive political environment. The Roman Catholic Church staunchly defended the Christian identity of the Timorese in the face of an influx of Indonesians from other provinces. The church worried about the government's condoning, to the point of encouraging, Islamic proselytization, and about its own freedom of action in a national political system disciplined to Pancasila democracy. Pope John Paul II's four-hour stopover in Dili, the capital of East Timor, on October 12, 1989, called international attention to the church's extraordinary position in the province. The disruption of traditional and Portuguese institutions, as well as forced resettlement of segments of the population, led to land disputes, official corruption, and economic exploitation by non-Timorese Indonesians attracted to the province. These grievances were exacerbated by a heavy-handed military presence not always respectful of Timorese rights. One consequence of Indonesian rule was the spread of literacy and skills acquisition by a younger generation of Timorese who were faced with growing unemployment but who also were politically conscious. It was the emerging militancy of the East Timorese youth, rather than the scattered Fretilin elements, that seemed to pose the greatest challenge to security and stability in the province in the early 1990s.

Indonesian officials who were aware that on a per capita basis East Timor had received a disproportionate share of developmental funds interpreted Timorese resentments as ingratitude. Nevertheless, the combination of military pressure and economic and social development programs had progressed to the point that on January 1, 1989, East Timor was proclaimed an open province to which travel and tourism were permitted on the same basis as elsewhere in Indonesia. Some tensions followed a minor demonstration during the pope's visit, but a reshuffling of the lines of military command and a more determined effort by the new military leadership in the province to improve civil-military relations were expected to ease tensions even further. These hopes were dashed on November 12, 1991, when troops fired on youthful marchers in a funeral procession that had become a proFretilin political demonstration in Dili. At least 50 and perhaps more than 100 people were killed.

The National Investigation Commission appointed by Suharto found the army guilty of "excessive force" and poor discipline in crowd control. The senior officer in East Timor, Brigadier General Rafael S. Warouw, was replaced, as was his superior in Bali; three officers were dismissed from the army, and at least eight officers and soldiers were court-martialed. However, the punishments were relatively light when contrasted with the harsh sentences meted out to Timorese arrested as instigators of the incident. Nevertheless, the president's acceptance of a report that directly contradicted the army's contention that the shootings had been in self-defense and his willingness to take action against military personnel were pragmatic decisions that took the risk of offending ABRI members who preferred solidarity. The central government's main concern seemed to be to contain the international criticism of what some foreign observers called the Dili Massacre.

The November 12 affair confirmed that there were still strong social and political problems in East Timor. It also raised questions as to the relative efficacy of the differing military approaches. Some officers felt that the relative tolerance shown by the military to the restless youth since 1989 was too permissive and encouraged opposition. The Dili affair also pointed out the strong emotions on the military side, which led to the unauthorized presence of members of the local military garrison who were widely accused of misbehavior. The investigation commission mentioned this in its official report, stating "another group of unorganized security personnel, acting outside any control or command, also fired shots and committed beatings, causing more casualties." Carrascalão called the replaced Warouw the "best military commander East Timor has ever had." Tragic as it was, the November 12 incident prompted both military and civilian government agencies to conduct a broad review of development and security policies in East Timor including the question of civil-military relations. In fact, Carrascalão's successor, Abilio Soares, was also a civilian as had been widely expected.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress