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Indonesia to Officially Implement Regional Autonomy Bill
The Indonesian government would officially implement its autonomy bill in its regions with an emphasizing to deal with disintegration threats which have been strongly coming from its eastern-most province of Irian Jaya and westernmost province of Aceh.
"Based on the operational policy, the government will officially start to implement regional autonomy on January 1, 2001, " Home Minister and Regional Autonomy Surjadi Soedirdja told the Commission II for Security and Domestic Affairs of the House of Representatives (DPR), citing implementation of regional autonomy was part of the on-going democratization process in Indonesia.
Soedirdja said the government would give special offers to Aceh and Irian Jaya provinces and their autonomy status would be different with other regions. "We'll give Aceh and Irian Jaya a special autonomy. A wide ranging autonomy," he said, adding the government has allocated funds to finance the programs in the two provinces.
He said for the first stage, the government would allocate as much as 28 billion rupiah (around 4 million U.S. dollars) to Irian Jaya to back the implementation of special autonomy there.
But he admitted that the government faces difficulties in making "finishing touch" to implement the program "due to separatism activities in the province."
A number of Irianese have been demanding an independence instead of accepting autonomy status offered by Jakarta.
They have been stepping up their rebellions against the central government by killing security personnel and immigrants.
Meanwhile, in Aceh, Soedirdja added that the government would seriously pay its attention on the development in the province.
He said, with the implementation of autonomy, the province would have greater authority in governing the region and it was expected that separatist movement in the province would die down.
Indonesia has 28 provinces stretching from Aceh (in the west) to Irian Jaya (in the east). The country has been facing serious threats of disintegration as a number of regions have been demanding independence and separate from the unitary state of Indonesia.
East Timor, which had been integrated into Indonesia for 23 years, voted in favor of independence instead of accepting a wide ranging autonomy offer from Jakarta last year through a U.N.- sponsored direct ballot.
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