PROBLEM OF COORDINATION GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC TEAM

Many grievances had been voiced in public fo­rum that coordination in Indonesia's government had been poorly executed and had become a grave prob­lem. Many policies were not executed to the maxi­mum as coordination was poor. While coordination was poor, ministries of the same group tend to blame each other. So disheartening indeed.

Poor coordination within the Government could be identified by the slow execution of a pro­gram. Not to mention coordination between Coordi­nating Ministers, even internal coordination in the re­spective ministries had been ineffective.

Under certain circumstances implementation of plan became extremely slow due to poor coordination as related to different interest that ministries served. Things turned worse when it came to different po­litical interest. For example, even the discourse of in­creasing price of subsidized oil had to be long and winding and took nearly 2 years to arrive at a point of agreement.

Only trouble was as the plan was agreed upon, the timing of execution was not right when the Government only increased oil price by June 22, 2013, coinciding with the Ramadhan fasting month and !dui Fitri. it was reasonable that inflation in July 2013 soared to as high as around 3.4%. All were on account of slow decision making due to different viewpoints among political parties in the coalition. For information the political parties in to coalition num­bered 7 political parties. This was known as "fat co­alition."

Hopefully the next Government would learn a lesson from the past Government. Reasonable be­ cause the next information could serve as clear ex­ample for the next Government. Word was out that when he was in office as Coordinating Minister in Economy, for one short month, Chaerul Tanjung [CT] had mapped out al least 3 problems which was not easy to solve today

Firstly, communication which was suppos­edly the key factor. The way it had been, according to CT, communication was often unclear and resulted in different interpretation. CT underscored the need to use clear language, no grey areas. To use grey expressions the subordinate would find it hard to understand. Such was the CT's statement in Apindo CEO Garthering, last Wednesday [28.5].

Secondly, coordination. Minister of Coordi­nation CT claimed he would tidy up coordination at Government level which was rated as not running well. So it was right for CT now to run meetings to make sure that coordination was running well. CT even promised that for the time being he decided not to receive guests. He said that he would only receive guests having grave problems, such as matters relat­ed to Freeport and New mount- matters to be solved soonest.

Thirdly, implementation of plan. CT was ex­pecting that all policies and programs being coordinated could be well implemented. The only thing was the effectiveness of policy implementation would well be if there was coordination. For that matter perhaps the Mister of Coordination needed to make desk mon­itoring of program implementation at the Ministry to monitor, inspect, and control.

Desk Monitoring was important so the Office of the Coordinating Minister could monitor progress of policy implementation. By applying traffic light management system every program could be marked. Green mark means program was running well; yellow means program was not fully effective and red means a program was totally jammed.

By such monitoring the Coordinating Minister could tell who was the Minister being accountable for low performance, which program were running effectively and why.

With his background as private entrepreneur, perhaps CT could understand the legal side of matters to be obeyed by Government officials. It was no longer a secret that stagnated programs was due to legal obstacles. At this point, whoever the leader, he would not dare to break any law as the sanction was hard.

It was unveiled that quite many legal products in the era of reformation which were not applicable as they were not compatible with some existing Law. Frequently among State Owned Enterprise [BUMN] some laws were found to be contradicting against another which bound Management’s maneuvers.

Whatever the condition, what CT had done deserved appreciation as there was initiative to make improvement although he would be in office for a short time, but who knows the steps he made could serve as reference for the next Government certainly all for a better Indonesia. (SS) 

Business News - June 4, 2014