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Ali Hapsah's Corner

Author Archives: Ali Hapsah FEB 12 2013

Urgensi Pemekaran Kabupaten Paser Lebih dari satu dekade pelaksanaan otonomi daerah, harapan akan terwujudnya kesejahteraan di tingkat lokal nampaknya masih menjadi pekerjaan rumah pemerintah daerah. Padahal kebijakan otonomi daerah yang tertuang dalam UU 22 tahun 1999 tentang Pemerintahan Daerah yang kemudian diganti dengan UU 32 tahun 2004, sejatinya mampu meningkatkan kesejahteraan masyarakat melalui strategi peningkatan pelayanan kepada masyarakat dan akselerasi pengembangan potensi daerah. Harapan ini berbasis pada argumentasi bahwa otonomi daerah telah memberikan kewenangan yang luas kepada daerah untuk mengelola potensi daerahnya masing masing. Selain itu, pemerintah daerah dipandang mempunyai pemahaman yang lebih komprehensif terhadap persoalan dan solusi yang pas sesuai dengan karakteristik daerah. Rentang kendali yang relatif lebih dekat juga menjadikan pemerintah daerah dapat lebih responsif dalam menyikapi setiap persoalan yang muncul di wilayahnya. Oleh karena itu harapan akan munculnya Tata pemerintahan yang menjadi dambaan semua pihak sangat mungkin dihadirkan melalui kebijakan otonomi daerah. Tak terkecuali Kabupaten Paser, tantangan pencapaian kesejahteraan dan peningkatan daya saing daerah sebagai tujuan akhir dari pelaksanaan otonomi daerah masih menjadi pekerjaan rumah pemerintah daerah. Diakui bahwa kebijakan desentralisasi telah memberikan kontribusi besar terhadap peningkatan kesejahteraan masyarakat Paser. Hal ini tergambar dari menurunnya angka kemiskinan dari tahun ke tahun. Akan tetapi peningkatan kesejahteraan masyarakat ini dianggap belum optimal jika dibandingkan dengan besarnya sumber daya yang dikelolah daerah ini sebagai konsekwensi dari penerapan kebijakan otonomi daerah. Ada beberapa faktor yang mempengaruhi mengapa otonomi daerah belum secara optimal memberikan dampak terhadap peningkatan kesejahteraan masyarakat Paser, yaitu: Luasan wilayah dan terbatasnya infrastruktur dasar: Luasa wilayah Kabupaten Paser mencapai 11.603,94 km2 atau sekitar 10 kali lipat dari rata-rata luas wilayah kabupaten/kota di Indonesia yang hanya berkisar antara 1000 sampai 4000 km2. Kondisi geografis yang terlalu luas dan infrastruktur yang tidak memadai menjadi kendala utama dalam pemberian pelayanan kepada masyarakat. Akibatnya luas wilayah yang sangat luas berdampak pada pengelolaan pemerintahan dan pelayanan publik yang menjadi kurang efektif. Hal ini juga secara langsung berpengaruh terhadap aktifitas perekonomian masyarakat. Misalnya, kondisi infrastuktur jalan yang belum memadai menjadikan mobilitas barang dan orang menjadi terhambat. Akibatnya kegiatan ekonomi menjadi tidak optimal dan pada akhirnya berdampak kepada tingkat kesejahteraan masyarakat Masih rendahnya SDM: Keterbatasan sumber daya manusia baik secara kuantitatif maupun secara kualitatif dan infrastruktur pendidikan juga ditenggarai memberikan kontribusi terhadap pencapaian kesejahteraan masyarakat. Hal ini tidak lepas dari luas cakupan pelayanan pendidikan yang harus dipenuhi oleh pemerintah daerah. Dispariras pembangunan antar wilayah dan distribusi perkembangan ekonomi yang belum merata: Kondisi geografis antar wilayah yang sangat variatif dengan luasan wilayah yang begitu besar ditambah dengan keterbatasan infrastruktur berdampak pada ketimpangan pembangunan antar wilayah. Wilayah kecamatan dengan infrastruktur yang lebih memadai dan terletak pada pusat-pusat pengembangan ekonomi dan industri mengalami kemajuan yang cukup berarti. Sebaliknya kecamatan yang aksebilitasnya relatif sulit dan jauh dari pusat ekonomi cenderung mengalami kondisi yang relatif terbelakang. Memperhatikan kondisi tersebut diatas, maka untuk mengoptimalkan pencapaian tujuan otonomi daerah maka dalam konteks kabupaten Paser, pemekaran wilayah dipandang dapat menjadi solusi. Pemekaran wilayah diharapkan dapat mempercepat pelaksanaan pembangunan, dan memudahkan pelayanan publik kepada masyarakat. Pemekaran wilayah diharapkan dapat memunculkan pusat-pusat pertumbuhan ekonomi baru, mampu meningkatkan berbagai potensi yang selama ini belum tergarap secara optimal baik potensi sumberdaya alam maupun sumberdaya manusia, membuka keterisolasian masyarakat terhadap pertumbuhan dan dapat memutus mata rantai pelayanan yang sebelumnya terpusat pada satu tempat, memicu motivasi masyarakat untuk ikut secara aktif dalam proses pembangunan dalam rangka meningkatkan taraf hidupnya. Ujung dari semua ini diharapkan dapat berdampak pada percepatan pencapaian kesejahteraan masyarakat di daerah. Dalam konteks Kabupaten Paser urgensi pemekaran wilayah didasarkan pada beberapa pertimbangan: 1. Mendekatkan pelayanan kepada masyarakat Pendekatan pelayanan melalui pemerintahan daerah yang baru diasumsikan akan lebih dapat memberikan pelayanan yang lebih baik dibandingkan dengan pelayanan melalui pemerintahan daerah induk dengan cakupan wilayah pelayanan yang lebih luas. Melalui proses perencanaan pembangunan daerah pada skala yang lebih terbatas, maka pelayanan publik sesuai kebutuhan lokal akan lebih tersedia. Disampaing itu, kendala geografis, infrastruktur dan sarana perhubungan yang minim diharapkan dapat teratasi dan hal ini sangat mungkin diwujudkan apabila ada upaya penanganan infrastruktur secara masif. Dari dimensi pelayanan publik, pemekaran daerah memperpendek jarak geografis antara pemukiman penduduk dengan sentra pelayanan, terutama ibukota pemerintahan daerah. Pemekaran juga mempersempit rentang kendali antara pemerintah daerah dengan unit pemerintahan di bawahnya dan penyediaan pelayanan publik yang lebih baik sangat mungkin dilakukan dalam wilayah kewenangan yang terbatas/terukur. 2. Pengembangan ekonomi Pemekaran wilayah dipandang akan mempercepat pertumbuhan ekonomi penduduk setempat melalui perbaikan kerangka pengembangan ekonomi daerah berbasiskan potensi lokal. Dengan dikembangkannya daerah baru yang otonom, maka akan memberikan peluang untuk menggali berbagai potensi ekonomi daerah baru yang selama ini belum tergali. Peluang ekonomi baru baik secara formal maupun informal menjadi lebih tersedia sebagai dampak ikutan pemekaran wilayah. Dengan kata lain, pemekaran daerah secara langsung akan menjadi trigger munculnya pusat-pusat pengembangan ekonomi baru yang berdampak pada pembukaan lowongan kerja baru. 3. Pemerataan dan keadilan Pemekaran daerah diharapkan akan menciptakan keadilan dalam hal pemerataan pembangunan dan distribusi ekonomi daerah. Pemekaran daerah yang diikuti dengan kucuran anggaran yang konsisten dari pemerintah baik dari kabupaten induk, pemerintah provinsi dan pemerintah pusat melalui mekanisme DAU dan DAK. Dengan demikian jaminan konsistensi ketersediaan dana untuk membangun wilayah pemekaran lebih terjamin. Hal ini akan mendorong peningkatan pendapatan per kapita di daerah tersebut. Oleh karena itu pemekaran dianggap sebagai cara untuk meningkatkan pembangunan di daerah yang kurang berkembang. Berdasarkan beberapa pertimbangan tersebut diatas, penulis berpandangan bahwa wacana pemekaran Kabupaten Paser dapat menjadi solusi terhadap persoalan mendasar yang dihadapi daerah ini terutama dalam hal membuka isolasi wilayah.

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Report this ad By Ali Hapsah • Posted in News FEB 4 2012

Pick your own fruits – Bacchus Marsh

(https://alihapsah.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/ali_3529.jpg) By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Media Gallery, Uncategorized FEB 4 2012

Catatan Perjalanan Ke Toronto (https://alihapsah.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/toronto.jpg)Tulisan ini memuat sekilas pengalaman saya dalam menghadiri konferensi yang diadakan oleh Canadian South East Asian Studies pada tanggal 14 -16 Oktober 2011. Bagi saya kehadiran saya di konferensi ini menjadi sesuatu yang istimewa karena konferensi ini akan menjadi konferensi internasional pertama yang akan saya hadiri untuk mempresentasikan beberapa temuan dalam peneliatan S3 saya. Satu kebahagian tersendiri karena baru kali ini saya punya kesempatan untuk melakukan perjalanan keluar negeri. Beberapa kesempatan sebelumnya tidak bisa saya gunakan karena adanya kendala visa yang belum juga disetujui sampai pada hari pelaksanaan konferensi. Dalam buku program konferensi yang dikirimkan melalui kepada saya, terlihat dengan jelas pada halaman sponsor bahwa KJRI Toronto menjadi salah satu sponsor kegiatan ini. Dalam benak saya mengatakan bahwa konferensi ini pasti mempunyai nilai strategis dimata KJRI sehingga KJRI berkenan menjadi salah satu sponsor untuk kegiatan ini. Bagi saya pribadi menjadi sesuatu yang menggembirakan karena saya sudah membayangkan akan ketemu dengan para staf dari KJRI yang sudah barang tentu juga akan berada disekitar arena konferensi. Setelah melalui perjalanan yang cukup panjang akhirnya saya sampai juga di Toronto, Canada. Saya menginap di Hotel sederhana yang berlokasi tidak jauh dari kampus University of Toronto dimana konferensi akan berlangsung. Saya menyempatkan untuk orientasi lokasi konferensi sehari sebelum pelaksanaan konferensi. Dengan bermodalkan petunjuk dari pegawai hotel, saya mencoba menelusuri jalan-jalan di Toronto. Rupanya Kampus University of Toronto cukup luas, sehingga tidak mudah untuk mendapatkan gedung yang dicari. Saya perlu bertanya beberapa kali kepada orang-orang yang saya temui di jalan sebelum akhirnya saya mendapatkan gedung tempat pelaksanaan konferensi yang akan dilaksanakan esok harinya. Singkat kata, meskipun tidak tidur semalaman karena pengaruh jetlag, saya tetap harus siap-siap untuk menyampaikan presentasi saya yang dijadwalkan pagi ini. Karena saya sudah mengetahui jalan pintas menuju ke lokasi konferensi, saya tidak terlalu memerlukan waktu panjang untuk bisa sampai ke lokasi kegiatan. Beberapa orang terlihat sudah hadir sebelum saya datang dan mereka sudah melakukan registrasi. Tadinya saya membayangkan akan ketemu orang-orang Indonesia, atau paling tidak staf dari KJRI sebagai salah satu sponsor dari kegiatan ini, tapi sampai sesi pertama akan dimulai saya belum juga melihat ada orang Indonesia disekitar arena konferensi. Saya mendapat giliran presentasi pada sesi kedua, karena itu saya mengunakan waktu saya untuk menghadiri panel yang dilaksanakan pada sesi pertama. Diantara beberapa panel yang ada, saya sepertinya lebih condong untuk menghadiri panel yang membahas topik “West Papua” yang diisi 4 pembicara: Ned Byrne dari Vancouver School of Theology dengan topik pergerakan kemerdekaan Papua Barat Modren lintas suku dan identitas tradisional masyarakat Papua; Jenny Munro dari University of Calgary yang membahas dampak pendidikan “colonial” Indonesia terhadap masyarakat Papua, terutama suku Dani yang menjadi studi kasus dalam penelitiannya dengan topik; Julian Smythe dari University of Manitoba yang meneliti tentang lagu-lagu pergerakan yang biasa dinyanyikan sebagai alat pemersatu bangsa Papua untuk mencapai kemerdekaannya; dan Jacob Nerenberg dari University of Toronto yang membahas mengenai advocacy hak asasi manusia terhadap kekerasan dan gender yang terjadi di Papua Barat dan Papua New Guinea. Dalam benak saya, dalam panel ini kemungkinan akan banyak informasi yang disampaikan diluar dari pengetahuan umum saya mengenai Papua selama ini dan ternyata memang benar adanya. Tertarik mengetahui isi presentasi para pembicara, silakan mengubungi saya lewat email. Ada sekitar 10 orang yang menghadiri panel ini, diluar 4 orang yang menjadi pembicara dalam panel tersebut. Diantara 14 orang tersebut, rupanya saya sendiri yang berasal dari regional Asia. Lainnya adalah para peneliti dari berbagai universitas di Canada dan USA. Yang menarik, semua yang hadir dalam panel tersebut bisa berbahasa Indonesia dengan lancar, bahkan salah satu pembicara memperkenalkan diri kepada saya dan mengatakan bahwa dia sebenarnya dibesarkan di Kalimantan Barat. Pendek kata, saya satu-satunya orang Indonesia yang hadir di dalam panel itu. Yang lain adalah semua peneliti dan pemerhati masalah Papua Barat. Hal lain yang menjadi catatan penting saya selama berada di Toronto adalalah sikap dan pelayanan yang luar biasa ditunjukkan oleh rekan-rekan KJRI Toronto yang sungguh diluar yang saya bayangkan. Pengalaman “kurang baik” dalam berhubungan dengan KJRI sebelumnya memberi kesan dalam pikiran saya bahwa dimana-mana KJRI pasti mempunyai sikap yang sama. Karena itu saya tidak punya inisiatif untuk menghubungi pihak KJRI sebelum saya berangkat menuju Toronto. Tetapi apa yang ditunjukkan oleh pihak KJRI di Toronto benar-benar berbeda dengan apa yang sudah menjadi pengetahuan saya. Saya merasa diperlakukan seperti keluarga sendiri. Saya diajak ke kantor KJRI dan bersilaturahmi dengan staf KJRI. Saya bersama beberapa rekan-rekan dari Indonesia diajak makan siang bersama. Pada malam sebelum saya menuju ke Airport, saya juga diundang makan malam sekaligus beramah tamah dengan keluarga Konsul Pensosbud di kediamannya. Yang paling berkesan adalah ketulusan staf KJRI untuk menampung saya di apartemennya dan mengantar saya mengelilingi kota Toronto. Atas semua pelayanan dan sikap persahabatan yang ditunjukkan rekan-rekan di KJRI Toronto, saya menyampaikan terima kasih yang tak terhingga. Bersambung … By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Article FEB 4 2012

Kiprah Pelajar Indonesia di Victoria University Dalam satu dasawarsa terakhir, jumlah pelajar Indonesia yang melanjutkan pendidikan di Victoria University mengalami pertumbuhan yang cukup signifikan. Pada tahun 2010 diperkirakan mencapai sekitar 60 orang. Angka ini dianggap cukup besar dibanding pada tahun 2002 yang hanya berkisar sekitar 8 orang. Mayoritas diantara para pelajar tersebut mengambil program pasca sarjana (Postgraduate) terutama untuk tingkat doctoral. Beberapa diantara mereka adalah alumni program Master dari berbagai jurusan di Victoria University, yang kemudian kembali ke VU untuk melanjutkan pendidikan mereka pada jenjang doctoral. Keberadaan Dr. Richard Chauvel sebagai Dosen senior di VU yang juga salah satu pakar tentang Indonesia dari Australia, menjadi daya tarik tersendiri bagi para pelajar Indonesia untuk melanjutkan studi di Victoria University. Sampai saat ini tercatat sekitar 15 orang mahasiswa PhD berada dibawah bimbingan Dr. Richard Chauvel. Topik penelitian mereka bervariasi, mulai dari isu desentralisasi, governance, demokratisasi sampai kepada masalah pengembangan ekonomi kerakyatan. Salah satu mahasiswa yang dibimbing oleh Dr. Richard Chauvel adalah Ali Hapsah. Ali yang yang sedang menyusun thesis tentang Peranan Pemerintah Daerah dalam Pengentasan Kemiskinan di Kalimantan Timur adalah salah seorang staff Pemerintah Kabupaten Paser yang sedang tugas belajar setelah mendapatkan beasiswa ALA dari Pemerintah Australia. Ali merupakan salah satu alumni MA Community Development, Victoria University yang lulus pada tahun 2004 atas beasiswa ADS. Semasa kuliah S2, pada tahun 2002 Ali menginisiasi lahirnya Victoria University Indonesian Students Association (VUISA). Sekembalinya pada tahun 2008, Ali kembali dipercaya untuk menjadi Presiden VUISA Periode 2009 – 2010. Dibawah kepemimpinan Ali, VUISA menjadi club resmi yang berafiliasi dengan Victoria University. Selain di VUISA, Ali juga menjadi pengurus Victoria University Postgraduate Association (VUPA). Di luar kampus, Ali juga tercatat sebagai pengurus Pusat Perhimpunan Pelajar Indonesia Australia. Keberhasilan Ali dalam menakhodai VUISA dan keterlibatan dia dalam berbagai kegiatan yang dilaksanakan di Kampus maupun diluar kampus mengantarkan dia sebagai salah satu penerima Student Leadership Award 2010 dari Victoria University. Prestasi lain yang sempat diraih oleh Ali adalah sebagai pemenang Runner Up pada lomba penulisan Essay yang dilaksanakan oleh Australian Indonesia Governance Research Partnership, The Australian National University (ANU). Salah satu kegiatan yang dilaksanakan oleh VUISA dibawah kepemimpinan Ali adalah Konferensi Internasional Pelajar Indonesia (KIPI) 2010 yang dilaksanakan pada tanggal 16-18 Juli 2010. Acara konferensi yang mengambil tema sentral tentang pendidikan di Indonesia mendapat dukungan penuh dari Dekan International Faculty of Arts Education and Human Development, Dr. Deborah Tyler. KIPI yang berlangsung selama tiga hari di City Flinders Campus dihadiri Duta Besar Indonesia untuk Australia, Bapak Primo Alui Joelianto dan dibuka secara resmi oleh Vice President (International), VU, Bapak Andrew Holloway. Konferensi ini melibatkan berbagai stakeholders pendidikan, yang terdiri dari unsur Pemerintah, akademisi, peneliti dan organisasi non-pemerintah. Konferensi semakin bermakna dengan hadirnya para pelajar Indonesia yang sedang belajar di berbagai universitas di Australia dan beberapa negara lain, diantaranya Amerika Serikat, Inggris, Mesir, Taiwan, dan Filipina untuk mempresentasikan penelitian mereka. KIPI 2010 bertujuan untuk untuk (1) mengembangkan jejaring Pelajar Indonesia di dunia untuk menajamkan strategi demi pembangunan Indonesia melalui sektor pendidikan; (2) mencermati secara kritis kebijakan dan fenomena pendidikan di Indonesia dengan memadukan pengalaman dan wawasan yang unik dari berbagai belahan dunia; (3) merumuskan rekomendasi kebijakan untuk perbaikan pendidikan di tanah air. Diskusi Panel pertama dengan tema Internasionalisasi Pendikan Tinggi di Indonesia menghadirkan 3 pembicara tamu, Prof. Ainun Na’im (Wakil Rektor UGM bidang Administrasi, Keuangan dan SDM), Dr. Erlenawati Sawir (peneliti di International Education Research Centre, Central Queensland University, dan Prof. Tanya Fitzgerald (Professor Educational Leadership, Management and History, La Trobe University, Australia). Sesi ini menunjukkan bahwa internasionalisasi pendidikan tinggi yang sedang trend di tanah air perlu dicermati secara kritis. Bila tidak, internasionalisasi malah akan menghambat akses golongan miskin untuk memperoleh pendidikan, tergerusnya nilai-nilai lokal yang semestinya bisa menjadi modal, dan terpisahnya dunia akademik dengan kebutuhan dan perkembangan masyarakat. Untuk menjawab berbagai resiko tersebut, internasionalisasi pendidikan tinggi di tanah air harus mengacu pada prinsip pendidikan sebagai hak dasar warga negara dimana akses semua golongan dalam masyarakat harus tetap dinomorsatukan. Selain itu, trend ini harus dipahami sebagai politik kultural untuk mengembangkan nilai-nilai multikulralisme dan kosmopolitanisme menuju ‘pandangan dunia’ yang lebih luas dan terbuka. Terakhir, internasionalisasi harus dalam kerangka peningkatan kualitas menuju ‘world-class university’ yang dibarengi dengan berbagai program pengembangan masyarakat sebagia saluran komunikasi dan kontribusi antara dunia akademik dengan perkembangan dan kebutuhan masyarakat. Diskusi Panel kedua membicarakan isu pendidikan di tanah air melalui perspektif tata kelola dan penyelenggarannya sebagai layanan masyarakat (public services). Dr. Taufik Hanafi (Direktur pada Direktorat Agama dan Pendidikan, Bapenas) menyampaikan makalah dengan judul Decentralisation of Education Sector in Indonesia: Evidence and Policy Implication. Ade Irawan dari Indonesian Corruption Watch/ICW menyampaikan makalah berjudul Good Governance dalam Tata Kelola Anggaran Pendidikan Nasional, dan Prof. Richard Chauvel (Associate Professor at School of Social Science, Victoria University) menyampaikan makalah tentang kerjasama pemerintah pemerintah Australia dan Indonesia dalam program pengembangan pendidikan. Sesi ini menunjukkan bahwa sistem pendidikan nasional masih menyimpan berbagai persoalan, mulai dari konseptualisasi hingga implementasi. Aspek konseptualisasi antara lain menyangkut prinsip otonomi berbasis sekolah dimana guru sebagai garda depan proses pembelajaran dan penilaian. Sementara kebijakan ujian nasional yang dijadikan satu-satunya tolak ukur kelulusan tanpa memandang disparitas yang begitu beragam malah bertentangan dengan prinsip ini. Aspek implementasi antara lain menyangkut masalah pendanaan pendidikan yang bersumber dari APBN. Dalam kasus BOS (Biaya Operasional Sekolah), misalnya, proses penyaluran dana langsung ke rekening milik sekolah ternyata tetap tak menghilangkan potensi korupsi karena posisi kepala sekolah yang subordinat di bawah kepala dinas pendidikan di level kabupaten/kota. Dengan otoritas mengangkat dan memberhentikan kepala sekolah serta menentukan distribusi berbagai dana dari pemerintah, kepala dinas kerapkali memaksa atau menciptakan situasi dimana kepala sekolah harus menyerahkan sejumlah uang supaya institusinya mendapatkan berbagai dana. Tidak hanya masalah uang, yang lebih dikhawatirkan adalah pengaruh relasi kuasa ini pada otonomi sekolah yang harusnya lebih memperhatikan kebutuhan masyrakat akan pendidikan dan memberikan layanan yang terbaik untuk mereka. Untuk menjawab persoalan ini, pemerintah harus meninjau ulang kebijakan ujian nasional sebagai satu-satunya tolak ukur kelulusan. Ujian nasional adalah metode penilaian yang tepat bagi pemerintah untuk memetakan capaian kualitas pendidikan dengan disparitas yang beragam, tapi sangatlah sentralistis dan otoriter bila menjadi satu-satunya tola ukur kelulusan. Otoritas terakhir haruslah dikembalikan kepada guru yang setiap hari menanggung tanggungjawab secara langsung dalam proses pendidikan. Dalam soal potensi korupsi berbagai dana pendidikan, patut dipertimbangkan untuk memperkuat Komite Sekolah sebagai representasi orang tua murid dan pemangku kepentingan pendidikan di sekitar sekolah. Institusi ini harus diperkuat kapasitasnya sehingga mampu menyusun Anggaran Perencanaan Belanja Sekolah (APBS) dan mengawasi penggunaannya, serta mengangkat dan memberhentikan sekolah untuk mengurangi intervensi dan tekanan kepala dinas. Sementara presentasi pararel 31 makalah yang lolos seleksi mencakup berbagai isu strategis, antara lain studi komparatif pendidikan Negara yang menganut desentralisasi, dilemma privatisasi pendidikan, nasib guru di SBI, pendidikan di daerah terpencil dan literasi kaum bisu tuli. Sebagian besar dari makalah yang dipresentasikan merupakan bagian dari research para pelajar Indonesia yang sedang menempuh pendidikan pasca sarjana, baik program master maupun doctoral degree di universitas luar negeri. Di akhir konferensi, Panitia Pengarah membacakan rekomendasi kebijakan yang merupakan ekstraksi gagasan, pemikiran dan ide yang tertuang dalam makalah seluruh narasumber serta hasil diskusi para pelajar Indonesia selama 3 hari berlangsungnya konferensi. Rekomendasi kebijakan tersebut meliputi, pemerintah harus: 1. Meninjau ulang Ujian Nasional sebagai satu-satunya tolak ukur kelulusan; 2. Memperbaiki mekanisme pengelolaan beasiswa DIKTI, menyangkut jumlah biaya hidup (living cost),masa studi bagi mahasiswa Doktoral dari 3 tahun menjadi 4 tahun dan pembekalan bahasa Inggris akademis untuk kepentingan studi; 3. Meningkatkan mutu pendidik, anak didik, sistem, dan sarana dan prasarana pendidikan di seluruh tanah air tanpa membedakan kasta sekolah, sekolah biasa atau sekolah berbasis internasional; 4. Meningkatkan kapasitas pemerintah daerah untuk menangani pendidikan di daerah, termasuk perbaikan sistem dan pengawasan yang lebih ketat atas penggunaan dana publik di sektor pendidikan; 5. Peningkatan mutu pendidikan ke standar internasional harus menitikberatkan pada substansi pendidikan tanpa meninggalkan nilai-nilai local; 6. Pelajar Indonesia yang belajar di luar negeri adalah duta bangsa, yang memililki kesempatan untuk berkontribusi baik ketika di luar negeri maupun ketika kembali ke Tanah Air; 7. Memberikan kesempatan yang sama bagi seluruh warga Negara Indonesia untuk mendapatkan pendidikan yang layak, termasuk disadvantage and disabled people, melalui perbaikan cara pandang hingga peningkatan akses dan kualitas pendidikan bagi mereka. Selain kegiatan konferensi, secara rutin VUISA juga memfasilitasi kegiatan seminar dalam format Indonesian Update yang melibatkan para tokoh-tokoh dari Indonesia. Salah satu tokoh yang pernah hadir dalam seminar yang diselenggarakan VUISA adalah mantan Menteri Pemberdayaan Perempuan, Ibu Khofifah Indar Parawansyah. Kegiatan lain yang terkait dengan akademis adalah acara colloquium yang diselenggarakan sekali dalam sebulan. Kegiatan ini dimaksudkan untuk menjadi sarana bagi para mahasiswa Indonesia di VU untuk menyampaikan idea tau gagasan terhadap persoalan yang lagi hangat diperbincangkan di tanah air, seperti kasus Bank Century. Disamping itu, kegiatan ini juga dimaksudkan untuk menjadi sarana penyampaian rencana atau hasil research para mahasiswa Indonesia di VU. By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Article FEB 4 2012

Conducting Community Development Work in Developing Countries INTRODUCTION In the last two decades, countries throughout the world including developed and developing countries were faced the dramatic impacts of global reformation. This new restructuring suggest that we are moving rapidly from the era of the nation states toward a global community dominated by regional market economies and growing interdependence. It has become routine for international observers to point out the surprising changes have taken place in all aspect of global life politically, economically, socially and even culturally. However, a real “new world order” remains mysterious. While experts may claim the global spread of democracy, political and economic instability has reached an unparalleled level. Among developing countries remain experience economic crisis. The gap between rich and poor has doubled in the past three decades, so that we now live in a world in which 20% of its people consume more than 80% of its wealth. During the 1980s, per capita incomes fell in many developing countries, severely miserable; poverty, starvation, and disease remain widespread.As developing countries, particularly Asian countries continuously receiving aids from developed countries, the development of communities who live in this region still remains become a big question. Even began in1997, this region has confronted multidimensional crisis. Under the circumstances, the role of community development workers (CDWs) delivers the aid in succeeding community development (CD) in the third world becomes crucial. This paper will examine the role of the community development workers, as well as their constraints and challenges in conducting community development work in developing countries. In doing so, it will also attempt to promote the effective of delivering community development works in developing countries. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: ORIGIN AND DEFINITION The concept of community development had emerged since the post-World War II. It became an international jargon in 1948 when the Cambridge Conference on African Administration, organized by the British Colonial Office, substituted the term community development for mass education. In the late 1940s and the 1950s the British Colonial Office, US International Cooperation Administration (USICA), and the United Nations (UN) encouraged the developing countries to take an interest in the community development approach. As a result, it gradually emerged as a universal phenomenon in the Third World, (Mezirow, 1963 and Voth, Donald E. and Brewster, Marcie, 1989).Definitions of community development in the literature are varied. To provide an overview, I would like to review some definitions of community development given by different experts and organizations as quoted by James A. Christenson, Kim Fendley and Jerry W. Robinson, Jr. inCommunity development in Perspective edited by James A. Christenson and Jerry W. Robinson,Jr.Dunbar (1972) defines community development as “a series of community improvements, which take place over time as a result of the common efforts of various groups of people … to meet human want or need”.Darby and Morris (1975) advances the definition that community development is “an educational approach which would raise levels of local awareness and increase the confidence and ability of community groups to identify and tackle their own problems.”Ravitz (1982) sees community development as “the active involvement of people at the level of the local community in resisting or supporting some cause[s] or issue[s] or program[s] that interest them.”Cawley (1984) considers community development as “a deliberate, democratic, developmental activity; focusing an existing social and geographical grouping of people; who participate in the solution of common problems for the common good.”The United Nations (1963) defined community development as “the process by which the efforts of the people themselves” were combined with “those of the governmental authorities” in order to “improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities,” to integrate “these communities into the life of the nation” and to “enable them to contribute fully to national progress.”Kenny (1994), states that community development is related to the notion that community has more responsibility for determining their own needs and setting up their own direction by managing their own resources based on principles “sharing resources, social interaction and participation, self help and mutual support activities”.From these diverse definitions, we can conclude that community development is a group of people in a certain place with their governmental authorities initiating a development process aimed at changing their economic, social, cultural and even environmental spheres.T THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WORKERSOne implication of the global restructuring is change of relationship between state and civil society. As a result, new pattern of community development practice appeared. The trend is that the increasing involvement of voluntary sector agencies in a field previously dominated by governments.Following this new trend, the role of community development workers also underwent transformation. They began focus on developmental strategies rather than welfare activities. They have also begun building coalition with others regionally, nationally and even internationally to support people-centred and sustainable development at the local level, and even they have involved in mobilising social movement voicing, for example, environmental, human rights and gender issues. In short, community development workers have very important role in helping communities to achieve their development goals. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES The new trend of global economics commonly called economic rationalism, which emphasize productivity, has shown remarkable achievement. The indicators can be seen from the growth of economic performance in several developing countries. However, following this achievement, in the early 1980s most developing countries also experienced welfare crisis. During the period, there has been insufficiency, insecurity and ambiguity of the welfare state, and it was persistently unable to fulfil the human needs. The welfare state promoted by western societies clearly was not able to provide social equality and even it was suspected contributing to widen social inequality and injustice. The fail of the welfare state to lead the community to a better life was generated by the monetary crisis due to the slowing of economic growth. Consequently, governments were in difficult positions because at the same time the people demanded welfare state service due to the increase of unemployment and poverty rate, (Ife, 2002).Meanwhile, Experts and donor countries have long debated the reasons for limited success of community development programs in the Third World. Some believe that a traditional value system is one of the major factors responsible for this. They argue that rural people suffer from paternalistic, apathy and dependency syndrome. The community and their institutions are tied to tradition and mired in myth, fallacy and age old beliefs that breed attitudes, perceptions, and behavioral patterns that are unfavorable with development, (Magstadt, 1991). The behavioral and attitudinal patterns of government or bureaucracy and their elitist approach further complicate the situation.According to Abedin (2000), the authoritarian and paternalistic social values and environment in most developing countries, particularly in Asia, perhaps contribute to the authoritarian and paternalistic behavior and attitude of the government. This can also contributes to the fact that the ordinary people are afraid of the bureaucratic authority and therefore suffer from dependency syndrome. The obvious example can be seen from several features of Indian life and history, where there “is a sharply defined hierarchy of sex, generation and age.” (Robson, 1964).Therefore, in most developing countries, community participation in developing process is very limited because nearly allsocial practices do not encourage principle of participation and empowerment. For example, in the field of administration, the decisions are usually made by the government; in society, by the upper strata or a small group of elite; and even in family, by the parents.Being unaccustomed to making their own decisions, ordinary people found it difficult to exercise their task of decision making and thus they continued to wait for the bureaucracy for decisions and for answers to their problems. They believe that government is capable of doing everything.Apart from this problem, the autocratic and paternalistic behavior of the government as inheritance of colonial has generated officers who usually “stand in a superior-inferior relationship to the people” (Abedin, 2000). This kind of attitude creates a wide gap between government and community. The situation is further complicated by the belief of government that community does not have enough capacity and potential to involve in development. Therefore, people become apathetic, dependent, and not confident.However, in the past few decades things have changed to a limited extent and the situation has been slowly moving in an egalitarian direction. For example, the implementation local autonomy in Indonesia has encouraged local governments and their communities to manage their own regions.Another dimension of developing countries is that poverty, illiteracy, unhygienic living condition, poor health care, and governments increasingly characterized by corruption, collusion and nepotism. CONDUCTING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGES The emerging of the new development paradigm has challenged community development workers in delivering their role. In my observation, at least there are three factors internally as well as externally that may become problems and challenges for the community development workers in conducting community development works in developing countries: Regimes, Culture and Community Development Workers themselves. The next section will discuss those three factors. Regimes Changing the role of Community development Workers (CDWs) from delivering welfare and service to advocacy, lobbing and even political action as demand of new world order has worsened the relationship between CDWs and governments. There is a wide space between CDWs and government to have different perceptions and even governments sometimes see CDWs as threaten. The governments worry about the CDWs programme that may decrease their popularity and can cut their influence. For these reason, government tightly under controls CDWs.The other constrains faced by CDWs in establishing their relationship with the governments are the gap between the willingness to operate their role as an agent of development and their dependency to government both regulatory and financially. As reality that CDWs operate based on government regulation (Heyzer, 1995), it is very possible for the government to encourage, tolerate, interfere, and discourage CDWs’ activity. Besides, the effort of CDWs to gain wider political space in conducting their role as advocates confronted with the government as legislation makers since the governments reluctant giving too much political space to CDWs to maintain their position. This reason comes from the idea that ‘CDWs ‘initiatives which generate popular bases of support are likely to threaten the legitimacy of elites and challenge government-defined notions of development (Elridge, 1989). Culture One weakness of the community development practice in developing countries is that the inconsistency of CDWs in implementing community based development principle, which oriented to local community. Based on my observation, most of development programs aimed at improving community in developing countries ignore cultural perspective, since these program are planned and even sometimes implemented by those who are from developed countries, where culturally has different background with community in developing countries. They are from countries that follow fundamentalism approach, which sees community as universal, (Crigger, 2001). As a result, inflexibility and disconnection between the context and the real situation potentially appear.For this reason, conducting community development work in developing countries is not as easy as carrying out community development work in developed countries. The presence of cultural borders between CDWs and community in terms of race, ethnicity, class, gender and sex has become a critical problem in delivering community development programs in developing countries. Therefore, CDWs are required to have ability to break the cultural borders and even in a certain level, they are demanded to be able to cross political, social, economic or ideological spheres, and move from one culture to another by putting aside their existing cultural beliefs.The other challenge that might be faced by CDWs in delivering community development in developing countries is the ability of the community to understand sufficiently the mission of CDWs. Some people are still difficult to understand the information given and provided by CDWs because of the educational limitation and culture barriers. For example, the poverty of linguistic description of their inner world sometimes creates misunderstanding between the community and CDWs. The result, sometimes the local community is prejudiced of the presence of the CDWs in their area. This affects the CDWs in delivering their programs because at the same time they need supports from the local community.Internal Community Development Workers The constraints and challenges of CDWs conducting community development work in developing countries not only come from external but also may be from internal CDWs themselves. As Korten (1990) claims, the inability of the organizations, both established by government and non government to cope with the increase scope of responsibility which demanded professionalism of activities in which they have been involved has become challenges for community development agent, (Korten 1990). All agents of development, particularly CDWs that are known as the most effective development agent in dealing with community, ideally should respond the presence of new development paradigm based on the principle of good governance which promoted civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency. CDWs have to establish investigation how natural resources are being explored, who is exploring what and for what purpose, how economic growth is created and who benefits from it. Nevertheless, in reality this is sometimes neglected. Moreover, the change of CDWs role from delivery service to advocacy and even political action has worsened the relationship between governments and CDWs, whereas the success achieving this kind of development really depends on the cooperation between the government as policy maker and CDWs as independents institution, which can contribute to operate the policy, which is established by the governments.The other factor is misconception of community development. Many organizations which claim themselves as CDWs has a limited idea and consider community development as a simple idea, whereas it is complex idea and not only cover social aspect as mostly people think but also it includes economic, political, environmental, cultural and even spiritual aspects, (Ife, 2002).Due to the misconception of community development, many community development programs establish strongly emphasize a certain aspect and ignoring others. Many projects aim to improve the quality of life of community focus only on economic aspect with the assumption that the success of community economic development will impact the other aspects. Yet, this assumption is always different with the reality because it ignores the complexity of human life and community experience. I believe that the usage of the inappropriate approach that is always utilised by community development workers is the main factor of failure in applying principles of good governance in terms of community empowerment within the project community development workers.It is commonly found, the attempt to empower community, the development workers usually strongly emphasise on the economic approach rather than the other aspects. For example, giving direct loans, in terms of funds, to the community in order to improve their life, sometimes fails. In fact, they do not utilize the funds to increase their welfare but spend the funds to meet their daily needs. Ideally, before applying the economic approach, it is very important to identify the real condition of the society.2. EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WORK IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES It is immediately apparent from this experience that the existing approaches used by state or community development workers do nothing to cope with crisis of welfare within community. Many countries particularly community development workers got confusion facing this situation. According to Onyx (1992), one of the main reasons for this confusion is the fact that the current concept of community development has been unable working thorough the new trend of economic rationalism. In many countries, the inability of governments to optimally manage natural resources, affording basic infrastructure and assuring basic needs of society within dynamic social, economic, and political spheres has led to the search for a kind of new alternative form of social provision which can consistently follow the change of new economic and social demand. In the last decade, there has been significant shift to respond the demand; supply-driven has changed to demand-driven approaches, from centralization to decentralization of resources and services management. This shift aims to increase efficiency, equity, empowerment and effectiveness, (Narayan, 1995).The notion of community-based development simply implies empowerment and decentralization of decisionmaking process. This means, decision makers must be rely on the community based on its aspirations and needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the shift within community in order to easily define its needs at more distant level. As a main idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as long as it is not destructive.As Ife (2002) states, we need to consider principle of change from below by valuing local knowledge, culture, resources and process. It is very common community development workers assume that they are experts with specialist knowledge ready to be brought to the community and used to help them. There is no any doubt that community development workers do have specialist knowledge, but to privilege this knowledge and to devalue the local knowledge of the community it self is the direct opposite of community development. The valuing of local knowledge is an essential component of any community development work. We have to assume that it is the members of the community who have the experience and know its needs, problems, strengths and its unique characteristics. The role of the community development workers is to listen and learn from the community, not to teach them. However, universal knowledge obtained by community development workers from schools also cannot be neglected. It is still require in helping community but community development must relay much more on local knowledge rather than universal knowledge.Beside local knowledge, local culture also is very important to take into account in delivering community development because it is very often the presence of community development workers in a certain community group even erodes the local culture. Therefore, the workers must be careful not to assume the superiority of their own culture.Thus, working within local culture will challenge the CDWs because they may find sort of values that may be contrast with their culture and even conflict with the human right. For this reason, CDWs have to understand that cultural values and practices are contested within communities. Therefore, cultural values and practices are dynamic following the change of community. In this stage, CDWs can engage with community in such way that does not necessarily validate cultural values and practices that conflict with human right but play important role by facilitating the community engaging in a process of cultural change and development.One of the important principles of community development is the principle of self-reliance, which means that communities are essentially reliant on their own resources, rather than being dependent on externally provided resources.Opposite with the reality, community development works are usually far from self-reliant. Resources in terms of funding are commonly obtain from the state, thorough the institution of the welfare state in various forms. This practice actually is not conducive to develop because it may generate dependency. Therefore, for the long term purpose, this practice should be eliminated altogether and start to explore the possibilities of creatively developing and using their own local resources, rather than those obtained externally.Every community is different. What works in one community may not work in another, because of differences in culture, history, tradition, geography, resources, climate, income, etc. For these reasons, community development workers have to work toward solutions, structure and process which are grounded in the local culture, and which make sense to local community.Therefore, CDWs need to apply “community-based development which is designed to involve community participants from the formulation of program, implementation, procedures and the This requires a good collaboration between the CDWs and the community based on the principles: cultural sensitivity, reciprocity and accountability. CDWs that have authorities on theoretical and methodological processes have to see community participants as authorities on their lives and the conditions that affect their lives. Therefore, it is demanded that the researchers understand a deep form of cultural sensitivity of the community participants in terms of history, social factors and geographic dimension. Such as research process will bring benefit to both CDWs and community participants.To achieve that, in my opinion, the following points should be paid attention by the CDWs in conducting community development work in developing countries:– Minimize conflict interests and role confusion Conflict interest potentially affects the CDWs’ perception with community. The intervention from the donor, which is increasingly powerful, can affect the CDWs’ behaviours. In this stage, principle of independency should become guidance. It is very important also to explain the mission of the CDWs because it is very often the community expects more than the CDWs can provide. Inform optimally: go on extra mile to inform participants It is very important to note that not all target community is educated. So, never assume that we have given enough information and sufficient understanding because in uneducated community, due to the language limitations, even basic information can be still strange information. For this reason, native language speaker translating is important, particularly those CDWs who can not speak the language of the target community– Respect the community and its values: begin and end with the community In most developing countries, basic values and tradition are still powerful and become guidelines of the community. For this reason, a CDW has to understand and try to build partnerships with the community in all phases of development, begin from planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating. Community involvement can avoid unethical or excluded feeling of the community and it can increase chances for the success of the project.– Maintain the positive relationship between CDWs and government As a matter of fact, there are a lot of possible clashed potencies between CDWs and governments. Yet some possibilities also can be established in order to maintain the positive relationship between them. According to Heyzer (1995), in order to develop and maintain the positive relationship between CDWs and governments, the authorities have to change the way of viewing CDWs by putting the relationship in such these ways: First, need more flexibility in interaction. In this case the government have to understand the change of CDWs’ role. If formerly they were known only as service delivery and associated with the grassroots, currently they have broader role including politics, economics. By this position, they might have different opinion with the governments and even against the policy, which is established by them. Otherwise, it will create a high tension in their relations and of course it will bring negative impact to community. CDWs should not be seen as an enemy that can threat the governments’ interests and legislate or regulate them to control their activities (Heyzer, 1995). Second, need cooperation. Although there is an assumption that the principle goal of programme established by government is to support its interest in order to gain support from the grassroots in effort to maintain its legitimacy and reputation, yet both CDWs and governments have the same purpose in establishing their development programmes that is to lead the community to a better life. So, these two agents of development can strengthen and enhance one another to reach the needs of grassroots based on their own ways. A few examples from Asia that showed positive outcomes in collaboration between CDWs and government can raise awareness of the important of mutual assistant. The governments should understand this phenomenon. For this reason, they have to build partnership with the CDWs, and not regard them as rival.Furthermore, governments must realize that CDWs have unquestionable experiences to achieve more sustainable development, which is required to address problem emerging at local levels, and they have been recognized closer to community. For this reality, the Governments must regard the CDWs as partner in reaching the grassroots. In addition, government may face a big problem regarding support from the grassroots if it fails managing its programme. For this reason, collaboration with CDWs, which are known closer, and more understand the problems faced by the rural community will bring beneficial to the government. By promoting NGO cooperation and activity at the local level, governments will benefit by obtaining:” support to realize their own tasks; deeper needs assessments completed by organizations working directly with clients; input into strategic planning and the development of local policy; access to effective, less expensive providers of social services which are now run by local government agencies and clerks; promotion of citizen responsibility; and, a greater openness by municipal employees to working with citizens.” (Guc, Michal, 1996). The need for internal improvement of CDWs Realizing the broader roles of CDWs, internal introspection and development are also needed within the CDWs, and even to strengthen their position and bargaining power, they have to build alliances and cooperation among CDWs. CDWs as agent of development should establish leadership roles by involving in formulating development policy issues, questioning the inequitable, profit-oriented and materialistic development and promoting sustainable development in terms of social justice and environmental concerns, seeking new directions for their own organizations, and actively taking a part in making networks and coalition with other CDWs to establish joint action, advocacy and strategy in effort to address local, regional, national and even international issues. In short, following the demand of the new world order, internal improvement also is very urgent among CDWs References can be provided upon requested By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Article FEB 4 2012

Community Development: Between Expectation and Reality INTRODUCTION Modernization promoted by western countries, followed by economic rationalism, has shown remarkable achievement. The presumption to its unquestionable success was based on the attaining of high performance of economic growth due to the high rate of investments in industrial sector. The development strategies following this approach is the achieving a maximum production by maximally managing resources with the purpose for people benefit. The principle of this strategy is that the increase of production would automatically increase the benefit for community. However, a range problem, including poverty, environmental deterioration, and the isolation of people from the development process, came up together with this sophistication. It clearly indicates that this success unable to fulfil the most essential need for human being socially, economically and politically, which are the need for community to live with their environment harmonically, and the need for them to live in harmony with the others, (Ife 2002). The existence of multidimensional crisis including ecological, economic, political, social and cultural instability which are currently overwhelming nearly all global community indicates the inability of the modern community to cope with these basic needs. Under the circumstances, finding new strategy to solve this gap becomes a critical issue since the development which is based on national interests obviously unable to address problem regarding ecological degradation and the spread of social injustice. Then community based development or people centred development becomes an alternative way since it is considered enables to meet the human need and the interaction with the environment viability and sustainability and places substantial value on local initiatives and diversity. This strategy, called community empowerment, aims to empower people to manage their own lives and resources and attain their own livelihood from their own resources. However, there is still a gap between theory and practice or expectation and reality on the implementation of this new strategy since many contemporary institutions, including governments, NGOs, private sectors and even the institutions which claim them selves as representative of democracy, tend to disempowered community and replacing the people role to control their lives. This essay will try to elaborate the gap between community development theory and the real condition in the field, and what factors contribute to this gap, and try to formulate recommendation or possible solution based on the current demand of global community. THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT The idea of community development covers a wide and diverse area and fundamentally it exists within the problems of people. Community is interpreted by a range of meanings as well. In community development activities, it is commonly defined as “a group of people who shares a common identity, such as geographical location, class or ethnic background, or who shares a special interest …” (Kenny 1994). The term development has a various interpretation as well. It is usually associated with the idea of ‘a better life’ and measured by economic achievement, standard of living and sophisticated technology. In terms of community development, it emphasize on the importance of social changes. So, implicitly, the idea of development is the notion of transformation, ((Kenny, 1994). Another definition of development is given by Korten (1990). He states, “Development is a process by which the members of a society increase their personal and institutional capacities to mobilise and manage resources to produce sustainable and justly distributed improvements in their quality of life consistent with their own aspirations.” It is plainly apparent that this definition sees development as a process and mostly focus on personal and institutional capacity. It explicitly represents the principles of justice, sustainability and comprehensiveness. It also recognizes that only people themselves can set up quality standard of improvement in their lives. The combination of these two words, community and development, has reproduced also a range of interpretation. Some writers define community development as social movement. Others approach it as work field of rural community organizations in effort to improve their life. Some view community development based on their experience as methodology which can be used by social workers dealing with community. As field of work, the UN has given definition that community development is “the processes by which the effort of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities, to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities, to integrate these communities into the life of the nations, and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress.” (Perlman and Gurin, 1972). In this concept, it implicitly recognizes that the government has responsibility to provide public services based on the initiative of the community themselves. According to Kenny (1994), community development is related also to the notion that community has more responsibility for determining their own needs and setting up their own direction by managing their own resources based on principles “sharing resources, social interaction and participation, self help and mutual support activities”. In this stage, community development workers act to assist community to identify their needs and empower them to utilize their own resources in order to control over their lives. They are also involved in addressing problems emerging within groups of community including those who have limited resources and marginalized from development process. Community development also related to the empowerment of indigenous people to choose their own future. Therefore, community development concerned with the existing decision maker in society and to what extent the decision produced by decision maker impact to community. From the range of interpretation on community development, Kenny (1994) summarizes that the term of community development refers to a job or profession, a method or approach in social and economic development, a component in human service work, a philosophical an intellectual approach to the world and a political activity which refers to principles of participation, empowerment, and decentralization. THE CURRENT PROBLEM OF GLOBAL COMMUNITY Twenty century was characterized as awakening of ‘new social movements’ in form of political action which demanded social change. These movements concerned on social, cultural and environmental issues including gender, peace, anti-nuclear, conservation, human rights, civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency. These movements exist to respond the three basic problems currently faced by human globally, which are poverty, environmental destruction and communal violence. Based on the Northwest Report (1996), in 1970 the number of world population living in absolute poverty estimated 650 million. In 1995, it has increased dramatically to 1.2 billion, nearly doubled in twenty years. Those people live in very inappropriate situation of diet, shelter and clean water. Today, there are about 5.8 billion people on the earth; one of every five person lives in absolutely poor. This number of population is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Overpopulation is already a serious problem, particularly in developing countries. With 4.3 billion people, these countries account for 78 per cent of the world’s population yet have only 15 per cent of the world’s wealth and income, and use only 12 percent of its natural resources and 27 percent of its energy each year. One implication is that 40 million absolute poor people die each year (110,000 per day) caused by malnutrition or related diseases or from contaminated drinking water. These inequities not only bring crucial problems for many segments of the earth’s population, they also generate social conflict. In case of environmental destruction, we have all heard a lot about threats to the future of the Earth’s environment. Global warming, acid rain, ozone destruction, massive species extinctions, pollution, and toxic contamination, excessive land filling of solid wastes, deforestation, and other environmental problems have major impacts on human life. Communal violence has taken place nearly in all part of the world whether it is done by state with state through its armed forces or by communal group with the other group of society. This situation has contributed to the increase number of refugees, (Korten 1995). These phenomena indicate that there has been increasing disintegration of social fabric. According to the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, “We live in a time of violence… Ethical barriers have broken down. Fundamental moral values are questioned and man is engulfed by waves of fear and insecurity.” (cited in Korten 1990). This crisis has reached the peak in the early 1980s since the welfare state has experienced crisis. During the period, social policy writers have substantially agreed that there has been insufficiency, insecurity and ambiguity of the welfare state, and it was persistently unable to fulfil the human needs. The welfare state promoted by western societies clearly was not able to provide social equality and even it was suspected contributing to widen social inequality and injustice. The fail of the welfare state to lead the community to a better life was generated by the monetary crisis due to the slowing of economic growth. Consequently, governments were in difficult positions because at the same time the people demanded welfare state service due to the increase of unemployment and poverty rate, (Ife, 2002). Meanwhile, new trend of global economics commonly called economic rationalism has emerged. This trend emphasizes on private sector and demands governments to reduce or even withdraw their intervention on community development programs and give more opportunity to private sectors to manage the programs regarding community with such reasons efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and unrestrained competition. However, this demand cannot run effectively since the governments are still reluctant to hand over all these business with the concern that it can harm their interests to gain support from the grassroots in effort to maintain its legitimacy, credibility and reputation, (Heyzer 1995). This is contributed also by the situation in the private sectors, including financial institutions of society, are deregulated. Consequently, public health, welfare and education institutions not only face financial problem but also they are often controlled and interfered by authoritarian governments, (Kenny 1994). According to Korten (1984), the failure to meet the basic needs of human caused by continuously implementing the development action based on development theories which is not oriented to three development priorities: poverty, environmental deterioration and people empowerment. It is immediately apparent that the form of community development which is required to solve the existing problems within the community must respects principle of social justice, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, decentralization and efficiency. EXPECTATION VERSUS REALITY The effort to fulfil the need of community, actually, has been endeavoured by different institutions with a range of mechanisms throughout year. Some used ethnicity, religion, village and even state as media and target of development. Nevertheless, those approaches have proven unable to expand and dynamite their roles to follow the social demand resulted from a massive change thorough the infusion of external ideas, management and technology and get difficulties to implement their current role against with the new order. The crisis in the welfare state also sourced from the failure of the state to provide new form of social, economic and political structure and the consistency using its inadequacy method. It is immediately apparent from this experience that the existing approaches used by state or community development workers do nothing to cope with crisis of welfare within community. Many countries particularly community development workers got confusion facing this situation. According to Onyx (1992), one of the main reasons for this confusion is the fact that the current concept of community development has been unable working thorough the new trend of economic rationalism. In many countries, the inability of governments to optimally manage natural resources, affording basic infrastructure and assuring basic needs of society within dynamic social, economic, and political spheres has led to the search for a kind of new alternative form of social provision which can consistently follow the change of new economic and social demand. In the last decade, there has been significant shift to respond the demand; supply-driven has changed to demand-driven approaches, from centralization to decentralization of resources and services management. This shift aims to increase efficiency, equity, empowerment and effectiveness, (Narayan 1995). Based on the collective social invention, it is found that in order to cope with the existing problems, the development agenda must be guided by a new paradigm based on alternative ideas, values, social technique, and technology. It seems that community based development or the other experts call people centred development approach will be an alternative method since this new paradigm has accommodated new trend of development which oriented to balance of ecology and human growth in terms of realizing human potentials. The notion of community based development simply implies empowerment and decentralization of decision making process. This means, decision makers must be rely on the community based on its aspirations and needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the shift within community in order to easily define its needs at more distant level. As a main idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as long as it is not destructive. Apart from this problem, the gap also has been contributed by the inability of the organizations, both established by government and non government to cope with the increase scope of responsibility which demanded professionalization of activities in which they have been involved, (Korten 1990). The presence of new development paradigm based on the principle of good governance which promoted civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency, ideally should be responded by all agents of development, particularly NGOs which are known as the most effective development agent in dealing with community, (reference). NGOs have to establish investigation how natural resources are being explored, who is exploring what and for what purpose, how economic growth is created and who benefits from it. Nevertheless, in reality this is sometimes neglected. Moreover, the change of NGOs role from delivery service to advocacy and even political action has worsened the relationship between governments and NGOs, whereas the success achieving this kind of development really depends on the cooperation between the government as policy maker and NGOs as independents institution which can contribute to operate the policy which is established by the governments. The other factor is misconception of community development. Many organizations which claim themselves as community development worker has a limited idea and consider community development as a simple idea, whereas it is complex idea and not only cover social aspect as mostly people think but also it includes economic, political, environmental, cultural and even spiritual aspects, (Ife, 2002). Due to the misconception of community development, many community development programs establish strongly emphasize a certain aspect and ignoring others. Many projects aim to improve the quality of life of community focus only on economic aspect with the assumption that the success of community economic development will impact the other aspects. Yet, this assumption is always different with the reality because it ignores the complexity of human life and community experience. I believe that the usage of the inappropriate approach which is always utilised by community development workers is the main factor of failure in applying principles of good governance in terms of community empowerment within the project community development workers. It is commonly found, the attempt to empower community, the development workers usually strongly emphasise on the economic approach rather than the other aspects. For example, giving direct loans, in terms of funds, to the community in order to improve their life, sometimes fails. In fact, they do not utilize the funds to increase their welfare but spend the funds to meet their daily needs. Ideally, before applying the economic approach, it is very important to identify the real condition of the society. As the holistic perspective emphasize that all these aspects are important and interconnected as well as affects each other. So, whoever connected with community development project must take into account and integrated all these aspects. For example, in establishing community economic development project, it is important to raise questions in relation with the other aspects. Will it strengthen social integration? Will it bring benefit for environment? Will it be appropriate with local culture? If these questions have been fulfilled, then it may establish the program. Besides, the growing consensus on the important of community based development still gets difficulties to implement in formulation development strategy in the national level. Most Non-government organizations, which are known have unquestionable development experiences, suffer from ‘a limited vision’, (Korten 1990). Most of them focus on village development level where the grassroots lives with small scale program, and just a few of them involve in policy level where national development strategies are formulated. Consequently, their activities very often do not correlate with the national and global trends. Some of them are very exclusive and just concentrate on their own projects away from others in a certain location, and even sometimes they work with unclear strategy concept. The symposium on “Development Alternatives: The challenge for NGOs” held in London in March 1987 points that the widening of poverty throughout the world caused by the missing re-examination of development policy and redefinition of governments and non-government organizations roles to respond the multidimensional crisis. Many NGOs just focus on fixing the grassroots problems and never question the essential social, economic and political structures which generate inequalities, imbalanced development, poverty and environmental destruction. In such situation, NGOs as agent of development should establish leadership roles by involving in formulating development policy issues, questioning the inequitable, profit-oriented and materialistic development and promoting sustainable development in terms of social justice and environmental concerns, seeking new directions for their own organizations, and actively taking a part in making networks and coalition with other NGOS to establish joint action, advocacy and strategy in effort to address local, regional, national and even international issues. Another factor contributing to the gap between the theory and practice of community development is the belief that development is a task of government. This belief has strengthened authoritarianism and generated gap to establish true development process. Due to this belief, the people have been ‘forced’ relying their resources to be managed by government, whereas there have been other agents of development which have important development role, including NGOs and private business. According to Korten (1995), these three groups of development agent have different role to development process. Government focuses on the use of threat power due to its ability to implement genuine force in maintaining public order and security. It has also right to command resources. Nevertheless, it tends to be less efficient and innovative due to its diverse constituencies which often arises conflict interest. The other agent of development is private sectors which focus on economic power. Its particular role is to generate new wealth thorough value-added activities and oriented to market forces. For this reason, this group is more responsive and becomes primary source of economics for society. While Voluntary organizations or commonly called non government organizations focus on integrative power. They are more independent and closer to community than the others. For this reason, the people contribute their resources to them because they believe that it will be shared to society. I believe that the cooperation of these agents is very essential in effort to gain development. However, the expectation on these agents of development sometimes different with the reality since there has been conflict interest both internally and among the agents. Some evidences from several countries obviously show that many rulers, politicians and bureaucrats individuals who control state power have used their positions to promote their own interests and gather their own wealth without noticing the public interest. They monopolize resources and control every economic activity. Individuals or organizations outside of the bureaucracy boundaries have fewer opportunities to participate in economic activities. As a result, they have little opportunity to build self-confidence or achieve economic independence. It is very often also states limit individual participation in decision making by applying top down approach which generates a negative impact that the community does not have incentive, commitment and motivation to respond to the development programs, (Ndiaye 1999). CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION It is immediately apparent from the explanation above that there has been a gap between theory or expectation and the reality of community development practice. Instead of the remarkable success achieved by modernization, in fact it has also brought disaster to human life. A range problem including poverty, environmental degradation and violence being faced by the global community currently is viewed as result of imbalance development. Community based development which is expected to be solution of these problems seem unable to follow the demand of social changes. Unprepared ness of three pillars of development including governments, NGOs, private sectors and others to follow the social change and ineffectiveness community development workers work together to gain the same aim to improve the life quality of the community have complicated the problem face by the community. For this reason, the solution for the current community development problems must be begun from the agent of development themselves thorough internal introspection. Some principles below may be important to be taken into account by development agents, including government, non-government organizations and private sectors in operating their roles in order to avoid conflict interest among them in afford to reach the grassroots. These principles are as follows: Need for cooperation among agents of development. As governments, NGOs and private sectors have the same purpose in establishing their development programmes to lead the community to a better life, these agents of development rightly can strengthen, enhance one another and build partnership to reach the needs of grassroots based on their own ways, and not regard one another as rival. Especially for governments, they must realize that the other agents of development, particularly NGOs, have unquestionable experiences to achieve more sustainable development which is required to address problem emerging within community, and they have been recognized closer to grassroots. For this reason, both governments and NGOs are required to seek common ground in establishing their collaboration in order to avoid classing in managing their role. According to Riker (1995), the common ground can be such as the following table: Main dimensions of political space NGO strategy and government strategy vis-à-vis each other DIMENSION OF POLITICAL SPACE

NGO STRATEGY

GOVERNMENT STRATEGY

ISSUE ORIENTATION

Influence development agenda, and critique propose alternative issue areas

Set development agenda and priorities, and monitor acceptable content of issue areas

FINANCIAL

Mobilize sufficient financial resources to be self-supporting and selfdetermining (autonomous of GO or donor control)

Monitor NGOs’ financial resources, and regulate and approve their use for development activities

ORGANIZATIONAL

Maintain sufficient autonomy from GO in NGO’s administration decisionmaking processes, operations, and field activities

Monitor NGOs’ administration, and regulate their operations and field activities

POLICY

Influence policy dialogue and decisions through advocacy to improve policy environment at various levels

Monitor policy dialogue, regulate access to policy making process, and maintain control over the policy environment

Source: Heyzer, Noeleen at el, 1995, Government-NGO Relations in Asia, Prospects and Challenges for People-Centred Development, Macmillan. APDC, London Need for NGOs to form national and international alliances. Realizing the broader roles of NGOs, internal introspection and improvement are required within the NGOs. To articulate principles of community based development also requires democratization process among NGOs themselves because there are some NGOs still implement centralized policy in their organizations. To strengthen their position and bargaining power, they are required to build alliances and cooperation among NGOs locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Besides, they are required to learn new skill of analysis and negotiation in effort to gain greater political space due to the change of their role and the most important thing that required to be considered is maintaining their independency. For this reason, they have to exclude from bureaucracies boundaries in order to run their role effectively. As a main idea of community development, empowerment practices should be consistently established as theory states. In this case, individual or communities need to be given and take more power to manage their own resources. Therefore, it is required to established trust that the community or persons are able to handle and care resources as well as allow them to be more creative and innovative as long as it is not destructive. Supporting community based development also require all institutions to encourage adoption of goals and processes which strengthen the capacity of community; reorientation of bureaucracies to support community empowerment in decision making including rule formulation; and achieving the need of community or the ability of development agencies including government or other community development workers to match between the social demand and the supply The success of community development depends on mutual aid or cooperation among the elements of society: governments, non-profit community groups, the private financial and development sectors and community in effort to manage the community’s potencies and provide three important factors, which are: economic, social and political aspects. Economic aspect in terms of the ability to provide fund investment using for physical construction projects, like infrastructure, housing, and entrepreneurial funds which is usually provided by governments and private business. Social aspect in terms of the activeness of community to participate in making public interest decisions and in development. It includes also the ability to optimize community organizations and community collective wisdom. Political aspects in terms of the ability to compromise different interests and idea emerging among the agents of development and within community itself to have the same perception in effort to improve the quality of life for community. In order to meet the most essential need for human being which is the need to live with their environment and others, principles of good governance and sustainable development including participation, law enforcement, transparency, responsiveness, equity, strategic vision, effectiveness and efficiency, professionalism, accountability, and supervision, must become guidance for all agents of development in managing their roles. References can be provided upon requested By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Article FEB 4 2012

The Implementation of Decentralization Policy in Indonesia: Benefits and Challenges INTRODUCTION Since President Suharto resigned in May 1998 caused by the people power led by students, there have been remarkable changes toward democracy in Indonesia. The strong indication can be seen from the success of Indonesia in carrying out general election, where according to some observers both domestic and foreign observers, it was the most democratic general election which had ever been carried out in Indonesia; freedom of press which was formerly tightly regulated and monopolized by the central government; a dramatic increase up to 181 in the number of political party within ten months, from May 1998 to February 1999, (Fatah 2000) ; amendment of 1945 Constitution which was taboo to be done during New Order Era, then to be conducted thorough plenary session of People Assembly in 1999. In short, nearly all sectors of national life experienced dramatic democratization process. This process is nation widely called for reformasi. One of the most important and fascinating aspects of changes in Indonesia during this period is the evolution of the relationship between the central government and the local governments thorough the implementation of decentralization policy. During the time, the demands from the local governments to apply local autonomy have become important issue and seem impossible to be neglected by the central government. Its is viewed that the local autonomy is the right way to bring the policy makers closer to citizens and to improve the poor quality of public services, as well as to solve disintegration issues caused by unequal development felt by different regions. Then Law No 22/1999 and 25/1999 on Local Government or Local Autonomy (UU PD) and Fiscal Balance between Central and Regions (UU PKPD) respectively were launched by Habibie’s government to accommodate local demands for the central government to decentralize its power and responsibility. Of course, there has been a great expectation on this new policy. It is expected that this new policy would create political, economical, and social stability and bring a better life to Indonesian community as well as enable to solve disintegration threat which has become more crucial recently. However, some people including central government argue that decentralization instead create more problems. A range problem that has been happening in some parts of Indonesia is viewed by the supporters of this perspective as results of the implementation of local autonomy, (Bali Post, 2002). For this reason, the Ministry of Home Affairs on behalf of the central government intends to revise the Law No 22/1999 on Local Autonomy. This essay will try to find out the benefits of decentralization policy, as well as the challenges faced by all national components, particularly local government and its community as a central of authority in the implementation of decentralization policy in Indonesia. The first part of this essay will briefly elaborate the Indonesian political, economical and social spheres under the Soeharto’s rule which was known as centralistic policy. It will be then continued by discussing the demands for decentralization policy. The benefits and challenges faced by the Indonesian government on the implementation of this new policy as an essential part of this essay will also be presented. Finally it will be a brief conclusion. INDONESIA UNDER NEW ORDER RULE As soon as Indonesia became an independent country, particularly under the Soehartos’s rule commonly called New Order, Indonesia committed to applying centralization policy, which means supporting and increasing power of the central government. Under this policy, Indonesia had shown remarkable development in all sectors. The indication can be seen from some essential changes, covering political and economic stability, over 32 years of the New Order rule, from 1966 to 1998. Based on the report of World Bank, the enrollment of primary-school had soared up since 1971, infant mortality had shown a significant decrease by 25 per cent since 1969, life expectancy had increased by 6 years since 1969, adult literacy had doubled, 62 per cent in 1989 against 39 per cent in 1960, and GNP (Gross National Product) had shown a dramatic change over the last ten years from US$ 100 in 1972 to US$ 530 in 1989, (Holloway 1989). These changes rose from the success of the development programs introduced by the New Order government that brought Indonesia more economically selfsufficient, and reached all levels of society in all parts of Indonesia, (Colin Mac Andrews 1985). While Birch (2001) states that the key to this success come from the ability of the state to monopolize political, social and economical power. These successes contributed to national integration and internal stability, as well as strengthen the role of the central government. Geographically, Indonesia was beginning much more integrated due to the success of government to cope with communication problems caused by its geographic diversity, and the most important thing is the success of central government to unify and maintain the integrity of Indonesia, which consists of more than 13,000 islands with a range of communal groups, ethnics, religions, tribes, and cultures. Economically, the New Order rule had succeeded in reaching a significant improvement for 27 years with relatively high economic growth at 6.5 of annual average growth, (Tambunan 2000). In effort to attain political legitimacy, the New Order put emphasize on economic development by adopting “an open-door policy”, (Suryadinata 1998). Such policy led to the increase of investment either from foreign or domestic investors throughout the year. In short, “the economic achievements of the New Order were at one time described as a miracle.” (Suryadinata 1998) Birch (2001) concludes, there are two important factors contributing to the success of development in some Asian countries, including Indonesia both economically, politically and socially, which are domination of single political party which create “authoritarian or a limited form of democracy” and the widespread promotion of ethnic diversity following the strategies for resolving ethnic conflict. Despite, the development shown by the New Order for 32 years was examined in the middle of 1997 when Indonesia underwent a crucial monetary crisis. In this period, all national capitals, including political, economic, and social capital disintegrated. The Indonesian economy did not have any power to prevent the decline of the Indonesian currency toward the US Dollar which reached unbelievable rate of more than Rp 15,000 per US dollar, whereas before monetary crisis Indonesian currency remained stable at around Rp 2,000 per US dollar for 32 years. The prices of daily needs rocketed. The society did not believe the government anymore and this obviously led to ineffective government. The political situation was very bad; riots and students demonstrated which could endanger national security happened nearly in all parts of Indonesia. In this situation, the development, which was shown during the Soeharto’s rule, began to be questioned. In fact, the Indonesian economic development had generated uneven income distribution and contributed to the increasing gap between rich and poor. In regards to the political situation and stability, in fact, hurt society. Under the circumstances, people, then, realized the negative impact following the development which had shown by centralized government for 32 years. Under the centralization policy, the central government had played a dominant role and even tended to be authoritarian. The Indonesian bureaucratic structure was characterized by a top-down decision making policy in which power was in the hand of the top official at the various levels of government structures. Over the 32 year period, Indonesia was under only a single ruler and even it seemed taboo to discuss leadership regeneration, whereas substitution of national leadership is very important to avoid tyrannical government (Ndiaye 1999). This was one of the efforts of the .central government to extend their strength by centralizing political power and administrative structures (Kingsbury 1998). Another prominent characteristic of New Order rule is the widespread of corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN). During the centralization policy, the central government monopolized resources as it controlled every economic activity. By monopolizing the resources, the central government became the center of power and it used this position to increase its influence. As Soeharto consolidated his political power, he built power with their loyalties, particularly with their families, (Kingsbury1998). Members of the ruling party took advantage of this situation by collecting wealth. In short, corruption, collusion and nepotism grew and spread in all levels of Indonesian administrative structures. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DECENTRALIZATION POLICY After over 30 years under a highly centralized government, Indonesia decided to implement a policy of decentralization, as a reaction against the failures of centralized policy in dealing with administration, political, social, economic, and even cultural management. This momentum is signified by establishing the Law No 22/1999 and 25/1999 on Local Government (UU PD) and Fiscal Balance between Central and Regions (UU PKPD) respectively which officially became effective on 1 January 2001. Law No. 22 /1999 on Local Government has devolved central government powers and responsibilities to local governments in all government administrative sectors excepts security and defense, foreign policy, monetary and fiscal matters, justice, and religious affairs. The implementation of this policy is existing local autonomy which gives more authority to the local governments to manage and arrange their resources to meet local communities’ interest based on their aspirations. Actually, decentralization is not a new term in the government system of Indonesia. In the former Law No. 5/1974 on Local Government, the notion of decentralization has been explicitly loaded. However, it was only ‘lip service’ because in practice, central government consistently showed centralistic policy and even the policy maker was not only centralized to the central government but it was centralized to a single person, president as a state leader, (Kingsbury 1998). Conceptually, the implementation of decentralization policy is based on the willingness to create democracy, equity and justice, efficiency, community participation and empowerment, and strong local legislatures. These principles are supported by visions of reformasi which have been declared by students that is to eradicate the practice of corruption, collusion and nepotism, commonly called KKN (Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme) within the government bureaucracy. It is assumed that decentralization will create democracy thorough local community participation. Hence, democratic policy is believed encouraging the spread of development, particularly to rural area where most of the Indonesian community live. According to Rondinelli (1981), decentralization is a wide-ranging concept, covering four heading classifications, including deconcentration, delegation, devolution and privatization. Deconcentration means transfer of some responsibilities from a central government agency to local administrative units. Delegation means transfers managerial responsibility to local governments to execute certain functions on behalf of central government. Devolution means giving a wide decision-making authority to local governments and substantially there is no any direct control from the central government. Privatization means transfers some government functions to private sectors or Non-governmental Organizations. Regarding these two laws, which are theoretically meant to complement each other, in case of Indonesia, there is a still unclear specific area of deconcentration, and it has not specified the local agents in the delegation process. This indicates that there is still uncertainty in defining decentralization in Indonesia (Tambunan 2000). In order to get a clear understanding, firstly, it will be useful to explain Indonesia’s government structures, then summarize what or to whom is being decentralized. The structure of government begins with national (central) government on the top, led by the President, Vice-president and assisted by Cabinet Ministers. Below the national government are local governments, including the provinces (propinsi), led by Governors (Gubernur); districts/municipalities (kabupaten/kota), led by District Heads (Bupati or Wali Kota), and sub-districts (kecamatan), led by Sub-district Heads (Camat). The fourth and lowest level of government are the villages (desa or kelurahan), led by Village Chiefs (Kepala Desa or Lurah). The design of decentralization based on Laws No. 22/1999 and No. 25/1999 implicates to the changes in central and local power relations in Indonesia’s government structure. All central government departments’ authorities excluding departments of foreign affairs, defense, religion, judiciary, and monetary and fiscal control were transferred to provincial and particularly district or municipal levels. The detail of list activities and authorities of the central and provincial governments is loaded in the Central Government Regulation (PP) No. 25/2000. All activities and authorities excluding in the regulation belong to district or municipal governments. In this stage, provinces have a double status as autonomous regions themselves and also as representatives of the central government in regions. As autonomous regions, provincial governments have authority to manage or coordinate certain matters in terms of interrelations among districts or municipalities. As the representatives of the central government, they manage certain administration tasks delegated by President, vice president or ministers. At the same time, semi-autonomous provincial governments will also be decentralized. The provincial governments should give more power to district levels as well. This indicates that the aim of designing decentralization policy is that giving more political and economic power to the district or municipalities (kabupaten kota) level rather than provincial level. BENEFITS As the aim of the decentralization policy, the implementation of the local autonomy has, in fact, brought the governments closer to their constituents, (Wardhono 2001). The implication is that the government services can be delivered more effectively and efficiently. This is based on the fact that district and municipal governments have a better understanding of the needs and aspirations of their communities than the central government. Furthermore, the problems appear within community are easily identified by local community. Therefore, it does not need a long bureaucracy to gain assists from the local governments. The other significant change in the implementation of decentralization policy is the empowerment of local parliaments at the district and municipal levels. In the past, Local legislative bodies were simply subordinate of governors or head of districts. In such relation, local parliaments did not have any significant political role to control and supervise the local governments, and at the same time, both governors and head of districts did not have any obligation to deliver responsibility to local parliaments but instead they had right to guide meaning to ‘intervene’ all political forces, including the local parliaments. Unlike under the centralization policy, the establishing Law No. 22/1999 has put the local parliaments in strong position. They have right to formulate the local regulations which in the past should be reported to the central government to get approval. They also have right to elect and even impeach the governors or head of districts without any intervention from the central government. Besides, there has been change in the relation between the provincial governments and the districts or municipal governments since the hieratical relationship has been abolished in the Law No. 22/1999. With this Law, the head of districts do not have any obligation to responsible to the governors but they have to responsible to the district or municipal parliaments. This, again, potentially contribute to the effort of strengthening good governance in terms of empowerment, accountability and democratization in the local level. In term of local government financial, the establishing Law 25/1999 on Fiscal Balance between Central and Regions also bring a significant benefit to the local governments, particularly those who are rich of natural resources, such as East Kalimantan, Riau and West Papua. The implication on the implementation of this Law has changed the amount of fund received by local governments from the central government. With this law, the central government has to give 25 per cent of the whole domestic income to the local governments thorough General Allocation Fund (DAU) where in the past, there was no any formula of how much money should be share to the local governments. This law also introduces income sharing for the provincial and district or municipal governments, particularly income sourced from natural resources, Earth and Building Tax (PBB), Income Fee for Right on Land and Building (BPHTB) and Private Income Tax (PPh Perorangan), (UU No. 17/2000 and PP No. 115/2000). The detail of provincial and district incomes, loaded in the Law No 114 of 2000 which explicitly mentions: The income from PBB is 10 per cent for central government and 90 per cent for local governments (16.2 per cent for provincial governments and 64.8 per cent for District or municipal governments). The other income is from BPHTB, which is 20 per cent for central government and 80 per cent for local governments (16 per cent for provincial governments and 64 per cent for district or municipal governments). The national income generated from natural resources, including forestry, general mining and fishery are shared by 20 per cent for central government and 80 per cent for local governments. While DAU, at least 25 per cent from the domestic income which is stated on the National Budget (APBN) has to be shared to the local governments by way 10 per cent for provincial government and 90 per cent for district and municipal governments. The others Law No. 17/ 2000 on Private Income Tax (PPh) and PPh article 21 obviously mention that all income generated from Private Incomer Tax and PPh article 21 have to be shared by way 80 per cent for central government and 20 per cent for local governments (40 per cent for provincial government and 60 per cent for district or municipal governments). Although some observers argue that those kinds of figures still show unfairness since the income sharing for resources which generated more income still given more to central government than to the local governments (94 per cent for central government and 6 per cent for the districts producing oil), however, these figures has indicated that the local governments, particularly the district and municipal governments have a great opportunity to manage development in their regions thorough the excessive funds received from the central government which are very different than before. CHALLENGES Despite strong support for decentralization, it is not surprising that many observers still regard the new policy as a threat. It remains becoming a big question whether both local governments and the broader community are able to manage the excessive responsibility and funds which have been passed on by the central government. There is widespread concern about the role of some of the government officials who are currently responsible for implementing local autonomy, and their relationship with the previous highly centralized government which was characterized by the practices of corruption, collusion, and nepotism (KKN). In several regions, practices of money politics almost become common discussion following the election of governors or head of districts. The strong evidence has been taken place in the new province of North Maluku where the result of election has been withdrawal due to the money politics practice. It seems that transferring power from central government to local government also means transferring practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN), (Pratikno 2002). This phenomenon has become challenge for the local governments in effort to eradicate KKN practices and promote transparency in the local level. It is already apparent that the consequence of implementing Law No. 22/1999 and 25/1999, the central government has to decentralize political and economical power to the local governments. This means that the local governments have broad opportunities as well as challenges to be more creative in effort to develop their regions. However, this has not been an easy process to achieve in the district and municipal levels since both the political culture and the excessive control of the central government during the New Order period had not encouraged the decentralization of political and financial power. Moreover, almost all local interest groups, including political parties, still remain weak and poorly organized (The SMERU Research Institute 2001). For this reason, some observers suggested that decentralization should be implemented at the provincial level since provinces have greater capacity to handle all these expanded responsibilities than the districts or municipalities. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that the central government felt that it was politically undesirable to build strong, self-governing provinces. The basic reason behind this is that if more power were to be decentralized, it might be easier for the provinces, particularly in the areas like Aceh and West Papua where independence movements are already posing a challenge to the central government, to break away from the national unitary system. Another implication in the implementation of Law 22 is the eradicating of all local offices (Kanwil) that formerly acted as representatives of central government in provincial level. This has emerged a serious problem in terms of employment mutation. Based on this Law, all central government’s employees who formerly worked in the province or district levels as representative of central government have automatically become local government’s employees. Consequently, local governments have to reform their internal structures to accommodate the huge increase in the number of employees that has been passed on from the central government. A significant part of this process includes placing a large number of ex-central government high officers who demand the same position after mutating to local government. This has become challenge since local government has been reluctant to mutate them to high position because at the same time, the local government also has a huge number of employees demand to be promoted to high position. The delay of a detailed plan of the transition process and the supporting regulations to clarify the procedures and processes that need to be undertaken by the local government to cope with this problem, have complicated this employees mutation. This problem still becomes ongoing issue in most local governments in Indonesia. The other thing that becomes a big concern in implementing decentralization is geographical and monographic reality of Indonesia with a population of over 203 million consisting of so many diverse religious, ethnics and socio-cultural elements. There is an indication that the implementation of local autonomy has created unrest in some part of the country which potentially lead to the national disintegration. This is due to response of some regions which identified local autonomy as notion of locality, ethnicity and religious group. Although the evidence does not seem indicating that the increasing number of ethnic conflicts in some parts of Indonesia has directly relationship with implementing of decentralization, the conflicts among ethnics which have been happening in some parts of Indonesia like Ambon, Sampit, and Poso occurred when the decentralization becomes a popular issue. These conflicts has been suspected connecting with Putra Daerah (native son) issue following the implementation of decentralization, where some regions has responded that people from other regions, can not live in the Putra Daerah regions. Strong evidence can be seen from the conflict between Dayak and Madura when Dayak drifted away all Madura who have settled in Sampit for a long time, and even they have been likely become original residents. Another case related to Putra Daerah issue is the response of West Sumatera and South Sulawesi community to take over the corporation of Padang Cement and Tonasa Cement which have been managed by central government thorough its state enterprise, with the reason, it would be more beneficial for the local community if those corporation managed by the local people. The Spokesman of Parliament, Akbar Tanjung (cited in Kompas 2002) states that this problem is one of the proven evidence that some of our community still do not understand comprehensively the essential aim of decentralization. Besides, those reactions are not in accordance with the spirit of 45 Constitution, particularly Article 33. A range issue following the implementation of decentralization policy in Indonesia has become grounds for the central government to revise Law 22 on Local Autonomy. However, according to Mallarangeng and Rasyid (cited in Jakarta Post 2002 and Media Indonesia 2001), the effort of the central government to revise the Law 22 was based on unfounded assumptions and illogical reasons. The assumption that local autonomy would jeopardize the sustainability of the country’s natural resources is totally wrong because the damages suffered by Indonesian forests and other natural ecosystems were the result of the centralized authority of the central government. The other questionable reason is the concern that the decentralization process would eventually generate the national disintegration. This, again, was not based on empirically evidence because most of the rebellion and separatism movements in some part of Indonesia were generated by the widespread dissatisfaction over the centralized authority of the central government. Those who see decentralization contradict with 45 constitution, in particular Article 33, which explicitly states that all natural resources belong to the state, have failed to see that the word ‘state’ in the Constitution does not simply mean the central government but the local government as well as the representation of the state. They claim that the strongest reason behind the revision was that the central government was afraid of loosing its economic power and rights. The other challenge or if I can say problem taking place in the implementation of decentralization is that the existing political tensions among regions due to the significant different of income levels. As mentioned above, some regions, like Riau, East Kalimantan and West Papua which are considered as rich regions ‘celebrated’ this policy while the others which have minus natural resources have to struggle to afford their needs. In order to survive, most of the local governments both provincial and district or municipal level have produced new Local Regulations (PERDA) in relation with the effort to generate local owned revenue where according to The Indonesian National Chambers of Commerce (KADIN) those thousands of local regulations (PERDA) have been jeopardizing economic development in Indonesia, both at the local and national level since most of the regulations were identified potentially inhibit inter-local trade and investment interest as well as increase high-cost economy, (Pratikno, 2002). For Instance, The provincial government of Lampung collects tax from traders who are transporting agriculture products from Lampung to other regions. As well as the district of Pasaman which obligates traders to pay charge in order to get approval letter from the local government to transport good from Pasaman to the other territory. This kind of regulation has been viewed potentially constrain the economic development. Still in relation with the effort of the local government to gain local revenue, some conflicts have been appearing among regions. Recently, land disputes among regions become mayor issue due to the effort of each region to manage maximally their resources to increase their income. The conflict happened among fishermen in Central and East Java is an evidence of this potential issue. CONCLUSION In fact, Indonesia has implemented decentralization policy. Nevertheless, its existence is still ongoing debate whether it is the best way to solve all problems which ongoing happen in Indonesia, or its presence instead will create new problems. Instead of these two different perspectives, those problems or challenges faced by the whole national components, including central and local governments may not make unsure to implement decentralization policy because I do believe that the implementation of this policy will create economic, social, and political stability as well as bring peace and security to all Indonesian community because the roots of all problems which are taking place Indonesia come from these factors. In my opinion, we do not need to debate about the positive and negative impacts of decentralization policy because the experience of this nation under the centralization policy has given proven evidence that centralized government has failed to create good governance which are civil society, sustainability, democratization, accountability, equity, and efficiency which become demand of Indonesian community. What we need to do now is both central and local governments have to commit implementing decentralization policy and try to improve the weakness of the law No.22/1999. Implementation of local autonomy must also involve all social components outside the boundary of government and the bureaucracy. The responsibility of local communities in each autonomous region must also be taken into account, so that government and the community can share the responsibility for the successful implementation of local autonomy. This implies that implementing local autonomy will be a long-term process, which must be widely understood not only by local governments but also by civil society. The most important thing that needs to be taken account by local community, particularly local government is that decentralization will obviously fail if local governments become autocratic and centralized administrations in the regions as the central government did under the new order rule. They have to democratize their operations, increase transparency, and allow a greater level of control by the public. Without such processes, I believe that decentralization will generate the risk of re-establishing some of the worst features of centralized Indonesia’s autocratic and corrupt style of government in the regions. In other words, decentralization will merely move corruption, collusion and nepotism from central government to local governments. References can be provided if it is required By Ali Hapsah • Posted in Article JUL 8 2011

70% Anggaran Daerah Habis untuk Gaji PNS Menteri Keuangan Agus Martowardojo tetap meminta pemerintah daerah menyediakan 20% anggarannya untuk pembangunan infrastruktur. Meskipun daerah habiskan 70% anggarannya untuk belanja pegawai. Demikian disampaikan Agus Marto saat ditemui di Gedung DPR RI, Senayan, Jakarta, Selasa (21/6/2011). “Kita dengan kerjasama antara Kementerian Keuangan dan Kementerian Dalam Negeri kita ingin menghimbau kepada daerah untuk selalu mencadangkan minimum 20% dari APBD-nya untuk belanja modal dan kita tahu untuk daerah-daerah yang baru pemekaran, banyak alokasi anggaran untuk rutin dan kepegawaian tetapi kita tidak ingin daerah terus mengembangkan biaya-biaya rutinnya dan melupakan pembiayaan untuk pembangunan infrastruktur dan belanja modal lainnya,” jelasnya. Sebelumnya, Wakil Menteri Keuangan Anny Ratnawaty mengaku kurang leluasa dalam mengelola anggaran negara untuk mendanai kegiatan-kegiatan produktif karena sedikitnya ruang fiskal yang hanya sekitar 8% dari kapasitas APBN. Dia menyebutkan total pagu belanja negara di APBN 2011 sebesar Rp 1.229,6 triliun dan sebagian besar sudah teralokasi untuk mendanai kegiatan belanja yang sifatnya mengikat. Antara lain untuk transfer ke daerah sebesar Rp 393 triliun, bayar bunga dan utang pokok Rp115 triliun, subsidi Rp188 triliun, dana pendidikan Rp240 triliun dan bantuan sosial Rp63 triliun. “Total dari 100% belanja negara yang Rp1.200 triliun, 92% sudah untuk belanja mengikat. Jadi yang betul-betul free untuk pembangunan baru, new initiative, tidak lebih dari 8%. Itu untuk belanja infrastruktur, untuk mendorong pembangunan ekonomi,” ujarnya. Anny mengatakan dalam APBN 2011 dana transfer ke daerah memang hanya Rp393 triliun. Namun, jika memperhitungkan pos belanja lain yang juga dinikmati rakyat di seluruh Indonesia, maka sebenarnya total anggaran belanja negara yang mengalir ke daerah mencapai 70%. Sayangnya, alokasi belanja tersebut sebagian besar digunakan hanya untuk bayar gaji Pegawai Negeri Sipil Daerah (PNSD). “Tapi ternyata alokasi belanja daerah yang besar itu sebagian besar hanya untuk bayar gaji pegawai. Bahkan ada daerah yang 70% APBD-nya digunakan untuk bayar gaji. Tahun ini saja ada formasi 1 juta PNSD. Apakah memang sebesar itu kebutuhannya? Makanya penting untuk melakukan reformasi manajemen PNS di pusat dan daerah,” Source: http://us.finance.detik.com/read/2011/06/21/211154/1665565/4/70-anggaran-daerah-habis-untuk-gaji-pns (http://us.finance.detik.com/read/2011/06/21/211154/1665565/4/70-anggaran-daerah-habis-untuk-gaji-pns) By Ali Hapsah • Posted in News JUL 8 2011

16 Daerah dengan Porsi APBD Terbanyak untuk Gaji PNS Menteri Keuangan diminta menciptakan formula dana perimbangan baru yang memberikan insentif bagi daerah yang berhasil meningkatkan pendapatannya dan mengurangi belanja pegawainya. Dengan cara begitu, diyakini banyak daerah yang melakukan perampingan birokrasi. “Untuk itu, segera dilakukan perubahan UU No 33 tahun 2004 tentang Perimbangan Keuangan Pusat-Daerah,” kata Sekjen Forum Indonesia untuk Transparansi Anggaran (FITRA) Yuna Farhan dalam rilis yang diterima detikcom, Senin (4/7/2011). Farhan mengatakan, menkeu seharusnya menyadari adanya berbagai kebijakan pegawai selama ini yang menjadi penyebab tingginya belanja pegawai di tingkat pusat maupun daerah. Pertama, remunerasi yang terbukti tidak mengurangi perilaku korupsi birokrasi. Pada APBN-P 2010 dianggarkan Rp 13,4 triliun untuk remunerasi. Bahkan, pejabat dengan grade I di Kemkeu dapat memperoleh remunerasi hinga, Rp 46,9 juta. “Kedua, Kenaikan gaji secara berkala mulai tahun 2007 sampai 2011 antara 5-10 persen, serta pemberian gaji ke-13. Ketiga, rekruiment PNS terus menerus tanpa memperhatikan keterbatasan anggaran, juga kebijakan yang berimplikasi pada beban belanja pegawai seperti pengangkatan Sekdes menjadi PNS,” katanya. Menurut Farhan, akibat kebijakan-kebijakan ini, daerah khususnya Kabupaten/Kota, memiliki potret APBD yang lebih besar ‘ongkos tukangnya’ ketimbang belanja pekerjaannya. Belanja pegawai semakin menggerus belanja modal daerah. Berdasarkan analisisnya, pada tahun 2007, porsi rata-rata belanja pegawai daerah 44 persen meningkat menjadi 55 persen pada tahun 2010, sementara belanja modal mengalami penurunan dari 24 persen pada tahun 2007 menjadi 15 persen pada tahun 2010. Bahkan pada APBD 2011, lanjut dia, terdapat 124 daerah yang belanja pegawainya di atas 60 persen dan belanja modalnya 1 sampai 15 persen. Dari 124 daerah tersebut, sebanyak 16 daerah memiliki belanja pegawai di atas 70 persen. “Tertinggi Kabupaten Lumajang yang memiliki belanja pegawai hingga 83 persen dan belanja modal hanya 1 persen. Jika kondisi ini dibiarkan berlarut-larut, maka kebangkrutan akan segera mengancam daerah dalam 2-3 tahun mendatang, karena APBD-nya hanya digunakan untuk membiayai pegawai. Otonomi daerah untuk mendekatkan pelayanan publik, sulit tercapai dengan semakin besarnya ‘ongkos tukang'” katanya. Selain memberi insentif, Fitra juga mengusulkan dilakukannya depolitisasi birokrasi. Selama ini, Pembina Pegawai Negeri Sipil Daerah (PNSD) adalah Kepala Daerah. Hal tersebut menyebabkan birokrasi dijadikan ajang politisasi kepala daerah untuk meraih dukungan birokrasi dengan menambah berbagai tunjangan dan rekrutment PNSD baru. “Menyusun rasio jumlah pegawai. Meskipun menurut Kempan rasio jumlah pegawai belum berlebihan dibandingkan jumlah penduduk, namun distribusinya tidak merata. Oleh karenanya, standar rasio pegawai tidak hanya berdasarkan jumlah penduduk, namun juga memasukan kondisi geografis dan kemampuan fiskal daerah,” ujar dia. Berikut 16 kab/Kota dengan belanja pegawai 70 persen ke atas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Kota Tasikmalaya 70 persen Kabupaten Klaten 70 persen Kota Bitung 70 persen Kota Padang Sidempuan 70 persen Kabupaten Sragen 70 persen Kabupaten Purworejo 70 persen Kabupaten Pemalang 70 persen Kabupaten Kulon Progo 71 persen Kabupaten Bantul 71 persen Kabupaten Kuningan 71 persen Kota Palu 71 persen Kabupaten Simalungun 72 persen Kabupaten Agam 72 persen Kota Ambon 73 persen Kabupaten Karanganyar 75 persen Kabupaten Lumajang 83 persen

Source: http://us.detiknews.com/read/2011/07/04/063856/1673575/10/16-daerah-dengan-porsi-apbd-terbanyak-untuk-gaji-pns?9911012 (http://us.detiknews.com/read/2011/07/04/063856/1673575/10/16-daerah-dengan-porsi-apbd-terbanyak-untuk-gaji-pns?9911012)

By Ali Hapsah • Posted in News JUL 8 2011

RAPBN 2010 Tak Konsisten Pulihkan Kesra Rancangan Anggaran Pendapatan dan Belanja Negara (RAPBN) 2010 dinilai mengandung kontradiksi karena tema yang diusungnya ‘Pemilihan Perekonomian Nasional dan Pemeliharaan Kesejahteraan Rakyat’ bertentangan dengan kebijakan alokasi anggaran di dalamnya. Menurut Yuna Farhan dari Seknas FITRA, kontraksi RAPBN 2010 lemah. Meski jumlahnya naik, tapi kenaikannya terkecil sejak lima tahun terakhir. “Tidak sesuai karena hampir separuh belanja pemerintah pusat hanya habis untuk belanja pegawai dan membayar utang sebesar 336 triliun atau 48 persen dari total,” tutur Yuna dalam keterangan pers bersama sejumlah lembaga swadaya lainnya di Restoran Pulau Dua, Senayan, Jumat (14/8). Kenaikan alokasi belanja dalam RAPBN 2010 juga terletak untuk belanja pegawai sebesar 21 persen yang kemudian menurunkan jumlah belanja subsidi sebesar 10 persen dan bantuan sosial sebesar 11 persen. “Penurunan subsidi terbesar itu sebenarnya pada obat generik, pupuk serta pangan padahal subsidi masih dibutuhkan petani. Belanja bantuan sosial terdiri dari BOS, Jamkesmas, raskin, PNPM juga berkurang,” lanjut Yuna. Yuna juga menegaskan fungsi pemulihan ekonomi dan peningkatan kesejahteraan rakyat tidak berjalan karena mengorbankan prioritas ekonomi, seperti infrastruktur, pertanian, perikanan dan perhubungan. Malah, fungsi alokasi anggaran pertahanan yang ditingkatkan 76 persen. “Kami bukan tidak ingin perbaikan alutsista tapi hasil audit BPK menyatakan laporan keuangan Dephan selalu disclaimer. “Oleh karena itu, itu diperbaiki dulu baru tahu berapa alokasi seharusnya untuk Dephan,” tandas Yuna. Source: http://otomotif.kompas.com/read/2009/08/14/15492364/rapbn.2010.tak.konsisten.pulihkan.kesra (http://otomotif.kompas.com/read/2009/08/14/15492364/rapbn.2010.tak.konsisten.pulihkan.kesra) By Ali Hapsah • Posted in News

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