2000-2001 – the Set up
The origins of the Partnership go back to Indonesia’s economic and political crisis of the late nineties, which culminated in the fall of Soeharto’s autocratic New Order regime in 1998. Amid the political confusion of the post-Soeharto era, the first free general elections in June 1999, organized with the support of the international community under the umbrella of the United Nations Development Programme, represented a major milestone on the path to governance reform. The success of this exercise set the stage for extending the collaboration of civil society, private sector, government, and donors to further advance governance reform.
At the time Government had little interest in improving the structures and processes of governance. People’s mistrust in Government was deep and civil society was weak. There was no reform agenda to talk about. To promote reforms an independent institutional mechanism was deemed necessary. The idea to develop such a mechanism grew out of discussions between the various stakeholders that had collaborated in the election process. It led to the decision in late 1999 to engage a consultation process under UNDP’s leadership that resulted in the creation of the Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia, also simply known as Partnership or the Partnership, in March 2000. The mechanism was to enable a broad-based and nationally owned governance reform process and would be able to draw on international technical and financial support.
The Partnership was built around a Governing Board, which was to guide and oversee its activities. Originally, it involved a group of initially 12 eminent reform-oriented Indonesians representing different walks of life, three multilateral organisations (UNDP, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank), as well as six ambassadors from donor countries, who were invited to join the Governing Board on a six-month rotational basis. The Governing Board met for the first time in May 2000 under Erna Witoelar, then a Minister of Public Works with a strong civil society background, as first chairperson. For the first year the Governing Board and indeed the Partnership remained essentially a forum for Indonesian stakeholders to meet and discuss reform efforts.
At the outset, the Partnership lacked the institutional capacities and systems to carry out its broader tasks. With the coming on stream of the UNDP project establishing the Executive Office in October 2000, it received the basic institutional tools to play its key role in agenda setting in governance reform by way of generating new ideas and approaches, spearheading breakthrough initiatives and building a wider and stronger constituency aimed at mainstreaming governance reform in Indonesian society. The Executive Office headed by an Executive Director served as secretariat to the Governing Board. As such it was responsible for (a) undertaking policy analysis, dialogue and advocacy (research, seminars, workshops, and the dissemination of information concerning reforms on governance) and (b) administering a trust fund to finance initiatives by other partners, such as mass organisations, universities, NGOs, and branches of government, both at local and central level. The Partnership office became operational in May 2001, the trust fund started to disburse in June 2001.
2001-2003 – The first steps
Once equipped with basic institutional framework, the Partnership started to get busy promoting the concept of ‘good governance’ and reaching out to a wide array of actors to create a critical mass of governance reform projects. It invited potential grantees to submit proposals for review and funding through the Indonesia governance trust. The approach was fantastically successful in generating proposals, which came in by the hundreds.
