Government soft power, reharnessing its power Owen Podger  ;   Professional associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

JAKARTA POST, 28 Agustus 2014

                                                                                                                       

I refer to the excellent article by Enda Nasution entitled “Soft power, the bazaar and voting for Indonesia’s future” in The Jakarta Post on Aug. 18. Enda states that life has changed, thanks to social media and digital technology, and people are often taking charge and solving their problems locally through their hand-held gadgets. He says “The dynamics of this new global age are too complex to be solved by the old way of command and conquer. A country as big and as diverse as Indonesia needs hundreds of leaders, thousands of thinkers and millions of doers and we need to be well coordinated so we all know that we are all going to the same direction. Indonesia needs to become a movement.” Modern media is indeed the new boy on the block, so dominant that it appears that the self-government in Indonesia is new, rather than undergoing a revival with the help of modern Information Technology. Soft power has a long history in Indonesia. First, there are the old civil society organizations. Some of the oldest formed as social resilience in colonial times, others grew during the Sukarno era, some of our best were established as resistance to the Soeharto regime, and then there has been a flourishing since the beginning of reformasi. Second, there are local community schools. Madrasah (Islamic school) came first as a self-government way of competing with the Dutch school system. Then came the other religions and secular organizations providing schools where the government could not. At the end of the Soeharto era, more than half the junior and senior high schools in the country were run by non-government organizations. Third, there are villages. Village self-government existed long before there were kings and sultans or colonialist or feudalist presidents or a ministry of home affairs. The government has laws and institutions to regulate these self-governing institutions, and tries to put them into a bureaucratic mould. The new Village Law aims to do much good, but it also strives to turn village governments into a different type of government than it has been in the past, modeled on regional government, not on more effective civil society. We have a ministry of religion that supports educational reform by providing incentives for private madrasah to turn to state madrasah, and for their teachers to become civil servants. We have school building programs that have massively increased the number of state high schools while private schools have struggled to survive. They all would want to replace efficient community driven school systems with inefficient government systems, by taking over rather than helping them provide the best value for society. So why do village governments and private schools accept and even clamor to go the opposite direction to the new trend that Enda describes? Money. The government promises money if these civil society organization adopts its inefficient models of government. Enda see that it is now time for a change in approach. Social media is essential, but alone cannot break down the disincentive systems in villages and schools and other civil society organizations. Surely the government realizes that so much of its reform program is actually working against this new trend. Take schools out of the Religious Affairs Ministry and put them in the Education and Culture Ministry, and change its policies so as to reward private schools for providing better value for money than the government can. Put villages and civil society organizations under an umbrella that will empower and nurture civil society, and provide funding as long as there is best value for money in provision of services. Don’t encourage inefficiency with promises of funding without head to performance. Enda is right. We do need principles deeply grounded, and let go of being in charge all the time, being flexible while taking on real problems through real action. Leaders who listen rather than command and inspire rather than instruct have a lot of undoing to do, removing wicked incentive systems, reducing reglomania, and demanding that their bureaucracy helps civil society to just do it. Some principles have been considered in the past. In 2009, a committee of Regional Representative Council (DPD) proposed an article for their version of a law on regional government that redefined government affairs. The article stated that government will not regulate (mengatur) or carry out (mengurus) anything that can be regulated and/or carried out by society itself. This article was not just a reflection of the new trend. It was also DPD’s interpretation of the preamble of the Constitution which gives the first reason for forming a government as to protect the people, meaning also to protect what they do themselves. The same committee proposed an article for their version of the village law that said that government should not intervene in village affairs, but rather support them. The principle should apply to all civil society organizations as long as they work for the common good. The Constitutional Court has now cleared the way for president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and vice president-elect Jusuf Kalla to get on with their new style of leadership. I am certain civil society as a whole will observe what they do with delight and anticipation, and help wherever they can. To use an old Kalla motto: the faster the better. ●