Poor governance can lead to violence: Research
Indra Budiari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Wed, November 12 2014, 9:38 AM

A long-term survey conducted by The Habibie Center has found that an absence of or lack of good governance and poor public service can trigger a violent response from the public.

The survey found that between 2005 and August 2014, 29 people died in 1,886 incidents of violence that were brought on by a lack of good governance.

The survey found that West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and Papua, two of the country’s most disadvantaged provinces, had the highest rates of violent incidents.

The research found that 621 of the 1,886 incidents of violence were triggered by poor public service, 378 by slow responses from law enforcement officers, 243 by red tape and 211 by corruption.

“For example, 200 people pelted rocks at the PLN [state electricity firm] office in Sambas regency in 2002. They were angry about the frequent blackouts in their area,” said Sopar.

The survey gathered data from 2005 to 2014 in 13 provinces, collected by the National Violence Monitoring System.

“Bad governance such as slow or unresponsive law enforcement officers and corruption will trigger a negative response from the public that can lead to violent behavior,” Sopar said.

Abdul Malik Gismar, senior advisor at the Partnership for Government Reform (Kemitraan), said that poor governance could also be seen from regional administrations’ willingness to only allocate a small amount of funds from their budgets for the education sector.

Malik said that despite a campaign by the central government urging local administrations to allocate 20 percent of their budgets for education, some provinces were allocated less than 2 percent of the local budget.

According to the 2012 Indonesia Governance Index by Kemitraan, NTB allocated the smallest amount of funds for education with only Rp 4,511 [US$0.37] per student per year, while Aceh allocated the most with Rp 954,410 per student per year.

“I don’t think students in West Nusa Tenggara can afford anything with that amount of funds. There can’t be any justification for this figure,” Malik said.

Malik suggested that in the future, a better oversight mechanism should be devised on regional leaders as well as legislative councils (DPRD), which had the authority to allocate the budget.

Rini Widyantini, the deputy of institutional affairs at the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry, said that poor public services and red tape resulted from a lack of coordination between government institutions.

Rini said that the country had too many institutions with overlapping authorities.

She said that maritime affairs were currently handled by the Defense Ministry, Home Ministry and the Indonesian Military (TNI).

“These sorts of problems lead to inefficiency and result in poor public service,” she said.

Rini called on the government to carry out more discussion before establishing more institutions in the future.



Sumber: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/11/12/poor-governance-can-lead-violence-research.html