In order to gain input to amend Law No. 22 Year 2007 on General Election Implementation and Law No. 32 Year 2004 on Regional Government, Commission II of House of Representative (DPR) made a visit to Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), led by Dr (HC). H. Taufiq Effendie. They were received by UGM Rector, Prof. Ir. Sudjarwadi, M.Eng., Ph.D, at Multimedia Room, Friday (12/2).
Taufiq Effendie stated that they aimed to listen and gather suggestions from academic community related to amendments to the General Election and Regional Government Laws in the hope to improve those Laws.
“Academic community is the one to be trusted. Nobody would believe what politicians say,†Taufiq said. According to Taufiq, the visit to UGM was the second one after University of Indonesia. The commission will continue to gain aspirations from academic community of Hasanuddin University in Makassar and University of North Sumatera.
Regarding that visit, a political expert of UGM, Dr. Ari Dwipayana, said that it was time for Commission II to look for input particularly on issues related to implementation of Regional Autonomy Law as the Law has produced many innovations as well as new problems in regions.
“The first problem is related to management. There are uncontrolled regional divisions. Therefore, new outlines for managing those regions are very important,†he explained. The second problem is related to the relationship between central and regional governments, also between regencies and provinces.
Ari Dwipayana said that the Law No.32 Year 2004 does not clearly make a clear cut about authority limit between provinces, regencies and the central government. In practice, there are many problems such as the Integrated Service Unit, established by a central institution in regional governments.
The third problem is the importance to re-manage governance aspect in regional governments, that is how to return the regional House of Representative's (DPRD) position as a monitoring and legislative institution to ensure check and balance and to ensure that the government reaches goal for people's prosperity.
In Dwipayana’s view, those need re-arrangement of central institutions as they are considered too huge. He suggested asymmetric decentralization concept in which the central government does not treat regional governments in the same way while regional governments can realize diversity because regions in Indonesia are different in development and characteristics.
This visit was also joined by Chairman of Commission II/Golkar faction, Drs. Burhanuddin Napitupulu, Vice Chairman of Commission II/PAN faction, Ir Teguh Juwarno, members of commission: Drs. H. Amrun Daulay, MM (Democrat), Dra. GRAY Koesmoertiyah, M.Pd (Democrat), Nurul Arifin, SIP, MSi (Golkar), Arif Wibowo (PDIP), H. Tossy Aryanto, SE, MM (PKS), Drs. H. Nu'man Abdul Hakim (PPP), Abdul Malik Haramain, M.Si (PKB), Drs. harun Al Rasyid (Gerindra) and Miryam Haryani SE, MSi (Hanura). From UGM there were Executive Secretary, Drs. Djoko Moerdiyanto, M.A, Dean of Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Prof. Dr. Pratikno, Drs. Cornelis Lay, MA and several teaching staff of Faculty of Law.