Jakarta – Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia in collaboration with The Directorate of Higher Education of the Ministry of National Education on 28th January 2009 organized a public lecture titled: “Measuring a Democratic Governance: The Performance Portrait of Provincial Governance in Indonesia.”
The lecture above was the first lecture of Partnership Lecture Series (PLS), which consists of six series of lecture in a year. The next lectures will be held in the fourth week of every two months at the same location. Partnership Lecture Series is meant to expand a smart, reflective, and strategic discourse room on the country and nation’s important issues.
Chief of Knowledge and Resource Center in the Partnership, Abdul Malik Gismar, stated that in the first lecture, Partnership wanted to introduce the Partnership Governance Index (PGI) to the public. PGI is an instrument built by the Partnership, through extensive and intensive consultation with many governance and research methodology practitioners and experts, to measure the quality of governance in every Province in Indonesia.
Further more, according to Malik, the data collection for PGI was conducted by province-based researchers. They are scholars, researchers, and practitioners in each of their province. PGI uses 6 principles of good governance, which are transparency, participation, accountability, justice, efficiency and effectiveness to measure four arenas or fields, which are: 1) Government, 2) Bureaucracy, 3) Civil Society, and 4) Economic Community in a province.
Based on PGI scale, namely 1 (very bad) until10 (very good), the average score of every province in Indonesia has only reached 5.11, or classified in the adequate or moderate category. DKI Jakarta Province was placed in the first rank with the score of 6.51, and North Sumatera Province took the last position with the score of 3.55.
Related to the appraisal given, Malik emphasized that PGI was not meant to punish or to give verdict certain provinces, but more to indicate which governance area in the province that still has less than impressive performance and needs improvement. “PGI is not meant to give verdict to provinces that don’t have good performance, but to give a portrait or a reflection for the provinces to improve their performance,” he emphasized.
PGI can also be used to see the relation between the provincial government and the district government, also between the provincial government and the central government. Aside from that, PGI is also able to point out the relation between politics and bureaucracy.
The Rector of Paramadina, Anies R. Baswedan, who was present as a resource person in the event stated that currently Indonesia is entering the third stage of Democratic transition. In this stage, in his opinion, it is possible for Indonesia to return to the pre-democracy era.
“The third period becomes an important one, because this period determines whether our democracy will develop or fall back to the era before democracy came,” Anies emphasized. “Democracy in Indonesia has the risk of death for good.”
Therefore, according to Anies, PGI is highly important in strengthening Democracy in Indonesia. “Measurements in PGI (transparency, accountability, participation and so forth) are useful to strengthen and to save our democracy,” he expressed.
The event was attended by more than 70 participants from various backgrounds, such as scholars, practitioners, national leaders, also mass media. The event was live-broadcasted as well through the teleconference facility in 10 Universities in Java and outside Java, such as Andalas Univ., Gadjah Mada Univ., Brawijaya Univ., Lampung Univ., Indonesian Christian Univ. (UKI) in Jakarta, Bina Dharma Univ. in Palembang, STIMIK Sinar Nusantara in Surakarta, STBA LIA in Jakarta, Udayana Univ., and Batam International Univ.
The Partnership, as an effort to continuously rekindle democracy and the values of good governance, also to develop PGI, has planned to conduct a governance assessment for every Municipality and City in Indonesia.
