difficult to synchronize and harmonize national and local development planning. Overlap and inconsistency in activities of national, provincial and district governments are unavoidable in light
of these institutional arrangements.
Problems also arise from different arrangements for regional planning between Law No. 252004 and Law No. 322004 in relation to the legal basis of planning documents and the annual
plan concept. Regional stakeholders are often confused because the Ministry of National Development Planning influences BAPPEDA to encourage regions to follow Law 252004 while
the Directorate General for Regional Development of the Ministry of Home Affairs via its Provincial and District Development Bureaus and Departments encourages regions to follow Law
No. 322004. Regional heads who want to fulfill their election campaigns promises and prepare the five-year plan for their term according to their vision and missions often encounter difficulties
because they have to largely compromise with regional legislators when RPJMD documents are to be validated with a regional regulation. Consequently, RPJMD present
ing the regional head’s vision and missions is often not used for reference by regions in their development planning. As a
result, it is extremely difficult to achieve consistency between RPJMD and work plans in regional development.
Maintaining consistency between medium term plans, annual plans, and budgets is also made challenging by the need to incorporate the bottom-up project proposal process
Musrenbang, where the constituents’ aspirations are collected from village to district level. Regional legislators believe they are also in touch with their constituents, and wish to influence
planning directly, whereas the executive side seeks to limit the annual project proposal to the annual plan process and the Musrenbang process. This different preference on processes leads
the executive side to “buy off” the regional legislators with a protion of the budget to be allocated to the legislator’s selected projects . This splitting of resources means that there is a reduced
success rate for Musrengbang proposals, disappointing proposal proponents who have invested much in the long public dialog that generated the proposals.
To facilitate synergy between national and regional development planning, the division of labor between the government, provinces and districts must be clarified. The use of unclearly
measurable national, provincial and district scales in functional assignment should be avoided. Regulations on national development planning documents and implications for regional planning
should be formulated clearly. Regional development planning should refer to and be synergic with national development planning. Regional planning by the executive branch through Musrenbang
and DPRD through recess should be integrated well and set out in regional regulations to make it binding on all regional stakeholders. Thus, it is expected that the synergy between national and
local planning and between executive and DPRD planning may be achieved well.
II.11 Position of Governor as Government’s Representative
The double roles of governor as regional head and government’s representative are
designed to be an instrument for the government to perform a coordination function between activities of provinces, districts and sectoral agencies in regions and provide guidance and
supervision over district government activities. The government has issued Government Regulation No. 192010 setting out the role of a governor as the government’s representative. The
Government Regulation is still controversial among different regional stakeholders. For district stakeholders, the regulation is considered to potentially inhibit their autonomy. A former regent
in NTT said that “the government regulation may result from a lobby of the Ministry of Home
Affairs by APPSI the Association of Provincial Governments across Indonesia and regents were not involved in the discussion about the government regulation. In fact, the government regulation
conflicts with Law No. 322004 and thus the regents can seek a judicial review from the Supreme Court
”. The lack of socialization about the government regulation may be a recognition of the negative predisposition of district stakeholders towards the government’s intention to strengthen
the role of governors as the government’s representatives. Some sta
keholders think that governors as the government’s representatives have not played their role effectively because governors do not have legal, organizational and budgetary
instruments used to implement the role. The government regulation is considered insufficient because it only governs the role of governors to coordinate national and regional activities and
provide guidance and supervision for districts in implementing their functions. Governors as
government’s representatives according to provincial stakeholders require a larger role in regional empowerment and synergy with sectoral ministries’ activities in regions. In practice, it is difficult
to integrate and synergize the government’s activities in regions. Provincial OPD heads, Bappeda and provincial
secretariats complain about their difficulty in finding out sectoral ministries’ activities in their provinces. In the meantime, governors do their best, for instance, by setting up
working groups involving them in assisting the governors as the governmen t’s representatives in
coordinating governmental functions and sectoral activities with regions. The difficulty in empowering governors as governments’ representatives lies in part on the
unclear relationship between governors as the government’s representatives and sectoral ministries. Government Regulation 192010 does not explicitly set out relationships between
sectoral ministries and governors as the government’s representatives. Relationships between sectoral ministries and regions are not necessarily built through governors; mechanisms such as
the DAK allocations and other National Budget APBN funds work largely outside of the
Governor’s direct involvement in the allocation. The Government Regulation failed to rectify this situation. As noted earlier, DAK allocations and other APBN funds are more determined by
national and local actors’ lobbies. Rent-seeking behavior remains dominant in APBN-generated allocations to regions.
The roots of the weak aforementioned government regulation is found in Law No. 322004 which does not govern the relationships between sectoral ministries and governors as the
government’s representatives andor the regions because this matter is outside the domain of regional government; there is a legal vacuum in this respect. Consequently, the involvement of
governors as the government’s representatives in sectoral ministries’ activities heavily depends on the discretion of each of the ministries. Some ministries require districts to seek approval from
governors in proposing DAK funds and other APBN-generated funds but most districts propose them directly to the ministries based on lobbies by RegentsMayors.
The complexity of relationship between the governors as central government representatives and as regional head becomes greater when the implementation of central
government activities in regions often involves provincial apparatus without the knowledge of governors as regional heads. Key informants in Public Works Offices in West Java, NTT and West
Kalimantan explain that in repairing national roads and national irrigation channels in regions, UPTsPublic Works Ministry Bureaus Balai often involve provincial public works office Dinas
PU apparatus in the activities without informing the governors as the government’s representatives. The involvement of workers encourages such bureaus balai to recruit workers
from provincial public works offices to implement Public Works Ministry’s projects in regions.
The resource persons say that in this case the provincial governments have provided an indirect subsidy for the government because the apparatus is paid by the provincial government DAU. A
governor once wrote the Ministry of Public Works to lodge a protest and an objection to this practice. The strong historical and psychological feeling of some personnel of the provincial public
works office as ex-employees of the Public Works Ministry prior to Law No. 22 Year 2009 has made them retain strong ties with the Public Ministry. Confusion in carrying out activities of
sectoral minis
tries in regions should be addressed and sectoral ministries’ activities in regions must be regulated.
The regulations must deal with activities of sectoral ministries and non-ministerial agencies and their relationship with the role of governors as the g
overnment’s representatives. The position of governors as the government’s representatives should not be restricted so as to be misperceived
as the representative of the Minister of Home Affairs in the regions. Sectoral ministries and non- ministerial agencies often feel unrepresented by governors. Consequently, they tend to maintain
their leverage in districts. Unsurprisingly, DAK and grants from sectoral ministries in districts are
not much known to governors as the government’s representatives. It is consequently difficult to coordinate and synergize national and regional activities.
In addition to the absence of regulations on relationships between governors and sectoral ministries, it is also difficult to coordinate in national and regional development planning. One
cause is inconsistent mechanism for planning and budget allocations. ABPN-generated funds with an annual highly variable nomenclature and unclear criteria for allocation to regions have put
governors in a difficult position as government representatives. Moreover, the APBN-generated funds often come at the end of each fiscal year and are not always released for the following fiscal
year. The funds are obtained by regions which have lobbied and have networks with sectoral ministries, Ministry of Finance and DPR. As long as the funds exist, it is difficult to make
governors serve as budget optimizers in ABPN-generated fund allocations to regions.
Several measures are needed to strengthen governors as the government’s representatives. First, the regulation on the position of governors as government representatives should be
broadened; governors should also represent sectoral ministries and non-ministerial agencies in regions. Second, the regulation on the role of governors as government representatives should put
them as intermediaries between the interests of sectoral ministries and the interests of provincial and district governments, including interests in optimizing DAK and other APBN-generated fund
allocations to support regional governance and harmonize government and regional planning. Third, all activities of sectoral ministries should be coordinated with governors as the
government’s representatives. As a consequence, the budget allocation in support of deconcentration for governors as the
government’s representatives should be sourced not only from deconcentration funds in the Ministry of Home Affairs but also from other sectoral ministries.
Fourth, coordination and guidance and supervision by governors as national representatives should be supported by full-time functional personnel appointed to that effect. These functional personnel
may come from regional governments or sectoral ministries with competency in providing guidance and supervision. Fifth, the budget to carry out the function of governors as the
government’s representatives and their functional personnel should be generated from APBN.
III. CONCLUSION
