VILLAGE GOVERNANCE IN INDONESIA —

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Hans Antlöv
Ford Foundation, Jakarta

Paper presented at the PERCIK conference

“Dynamics of Local Politics in Indonesia”
Yogyakarta, 3-7 July 2000

PRELIMINARY VERSION. COMMENTS ARE WELCOME

I will in this paper discuss the challenges of reforming the

governance system in rural Indonesia, and how to
encourage good village governance. I here define good
governance as the exercise of democratic authority over
public policies and state institutions. The challenge I am
raising is to transform highly standardized, authoritarian
and centralistic village governments into social and
political institutions that are respected by and
accountable to villagers. The paper will start with a
discussion of what might at first seem to be a historical
topic: village government during the New Order. But
since the changes introduced during the thirty years of
the Soeharto presidency have had deep impact, they
might not be easily unmade. The political and
administrative structures and practices introduced during
the 1970s radically transformed village governance by
fully integrating villages into the national bureaucratic
structure .The second part of the paper will look at the
present national framework and some of the
implementing regulations. Finally, I will present a case
study of changes in local government pattern in a village
in West Java that I have followed closely over the past 15
years. We will thus go from the lofty ideals of normative
legislation to the reality of local politics. I will discuss the
distortion that occurs in this move downwards, and argue
that we need to carefully monitor this process in order to
maintain the spirit of reformasi.
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One of the challenges for the new democratic government in

Indonesia is to regain the trust of people, the large majority of
which still live in kampungs and small towns in the Indonesian
countryside. These were the ordinary villagers that up to 1998
were lumped together as a “floating mass” (massa
mengambang), not being allowed to participate in politics.
During the past three decades, the central government has
totally controlled and penetrated the countryside in all parts of
the country, even the most isolated. There is probably not a
single village (ca. 61.000) or urban ward (ca. 8.000) in
Indonesia without the compulsory forest of signs in front of
government offices. PKK, LKMD, KUD, Karang Taruna, Golkar —
these and many more are state-based associations active in
communities. The intervention by the central government has
in many parts of Indonesia led to increased economic
development. Education, health care and infrastructure have
become much better during the past twenty years, and many
villages in Indonesia have today access to schools, electricity
and local health care posts. But the price for this intervention
and economic development has been high to pay. Uniformity
and standardization, destruction of social fabric, co-optation of
village leaders, abuse of power and corruption are but some of
the most acute problems. Peasants and landless laborers alike
have become disappointed with the authoritarian and uniform
nature of the state, as they find it in their home village.
The issue today is to build functional, democratic and
autonomous village governments in a situation of political
distress, economic demise, and floundering social institutions.
A new law on Regional Governance (no. 22 of 1999 — UU
22/99) outlines the new decentralized and democratic
structure, devolving most authorities, functions and services to
the rural district (kabupaten) and urban municipality (kota),
while providing for a separation of power on all levels,
including the village, which is also provided with a measure of
autonomy. This regional autonomy is an almost one hundred
per cent face-about change from the past, radically
transforming the future of governance in Indonesia.
We know almost nothing about the changes that
reformasi has induced for the village government and local
leadership. Village governance is hardly discussed at all today,
even thought it is a part of UU 22/99 on Regional Governance.
Almost all public and media attention goes towards the
regional autonomy part of the law — the promise that the
 3

kabupaten will be made autonomous. The nineteen paragraphs

about village governance that replace the old law (no. 5 of
1979 — UU 5/79) have received very little attention. Most
activists in Jakarta are not aware even of them. There is to my
knowledge only one (1!) book published during the past two
years in Indonesia on recent changes in village governance
(Angger Jati Wijaya et. al. 2000), and there have been almost
no op-eds or newspaper articles about the new village decrees.
This is indeed strange in a country in which the great majority
of people still live in Jakarta, but perhaps goes to show the
urban bias of journalism, academics and activism.

1. Village Government during the New Order

A shorthand description of Soeharto’s New Order included 1

administrative monopoly and centralized political control, strict
regulations for the activities of non-government associations,
and an active involvement of the armed forces in public affairs.
Public policy formulation was strongly monopolized by civil
servants, high-ranking military officers, and a small number of
state-sponsored think tanks. The most conspicuous feature of
the Indonesian state, and the most far-reaching consequence
of the New Order project, was its presence in almost all
spheres of everyday life. Village leaders were members in the
state-party Golkar and incorporated into the national
bureaucracy. These representatives were required to maintain
tight control over village activities, monitoring people's
activities while promoting the New Order's economic priorities.
The voice of civil society in public policy was limited to the
occasional letter to the editor and participation in the
controlled election process every five years. Pressures from
civil society toward reforms were dismissed, and criticism of
official policy could be perceived as disloyalty or subversion.
Civil and political liberties suffered and democratic institutions
functioned in name only, creating an image of political stability
and communal harmony to spur increased foreign investments.
Although the countryside was romanticized as the place
where the Indonesian “original democracy” was to be found,
political power has over the past decades been firmly
entrenched in the local offices of centralized bureaucracies.
1
I shall use past tense when I talk about the New Order, but I do this with
some hesitation since most of the structures put in place during the New
Order are still in place. I will return to the question of changes later in the
paper.
 4

Village officials monopolized, and misappropriated,

development funds and public services. The administrative
culture of top-down intervention schemes and state-oriented
civil servants contributed to the severe lack of people’s
participation. There were few participatory mechanisms in
deciding community priorities, and the diversity of socio-
economic conditions, cultures, customary rights and modes of
decision-making were effectively ignored.
The legal framework for this structure was outlined in Law
no. 5 of 1979 (UU 5/79) on Village Government and its
subsequent implementing decrees. For the first time in
Indonesian history, UU 5/79 demarcated the structure of the
village government. 2 The law was a follow-up of Law no. 5 of
1974 (UU 5/74) on Governance in the Regions which detailed
the relation between central government, province, district and
sub-district. The village was mentioned in only in paragraph
88, which merely stated that a separate law would be made for
the village government. It took five years to do so.
The official and explicit aim of UU 5/79 was to
standardize the many local variations in village governments.
Villages were to be “made uniform” (penyeragaman bentuk,
General Clarification, section 4). The political objective for the
intervention and standardization was a need by the New Order
government to be in full control of all levels of government. In
order to “sustain development in all sections across Indonesia
and to achieve the national aspirations of Pancasila — a just
and prosperous society, material as well as spiritual, for the
people of Indonesia — there is a need to strengthen the village
government” (General Clarification, section 1.3). The two
pillars of the New Order —Economic Development
(pembangunan) and National Stability (stabilitas nasional)
could only be achieved if the central government was in full
control of the countryside, standardizing and supervising
village governments. New Order architects used local
communities as vehicles for development and stability, and
indirectly (by delivering these goods) legitimacy. It worked for
some time, but ultimately failed. The pressures in 1998-99 for
regional autonomy is as much based on local aspirations as it
is on dismay with the standardization and centralistic policy of
the last twenty years, with the central government interfering

2
Law 5/79, as well as most other regulations quoted below, are compiled
in Kansil 1988.
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in all aspects of people’s life, including their village

government. But let us wait with this part of the story.
With the 1979 law, village affairs were brought under the
supervision and close control of higher authorities. While the
law stated that the village had “the right to manage its own
affairs”, it immediately noted that this “does not mean
autonomy” (General Clarification, section 7). The first
paragraph of the law clearly defined the village’s subordinate
nature: it was nothing more and nothing less than “the lowest
level of the government structure directly under the sub-
district chairman”.
Paragraph 3 defined the village government as the
headman (with his staff) and the Village Assembly (Lembaga
Musyawarah Desa – LMD). Significantly, there was no
separation of powers between the executive and legislative.
The headman was ex officio the chairman of the LMD and the
village secretary was ex officio LMD secretary. Other members
were appointed by the headman. No mechanisms existed for
the village population to hold the village headman
accountable, except for elections every eight years. The
headman was responsible to higher authorities, represented by
the sub-district chairman (UU 5/79, §10.2) and not to the LMD.
The headman had to read his accountability document to the
LMD once a year (sent to the sub-district chairman for
approval) but it could not be rejected. And why would it, since
all members of LMD were appointed by the headman?
A new institution was introduced in 1980 (Presidential
Instruction, no. 28 1980). This was the so-called “Village
Community Resilience Board” (LKMD), an institution that soon
was to become the state’s main vehicles for rural development.
A main reason for its popularity was an intensification of
village government programs during the early 1980. The LKMD
was the lowest level of a complex planning procedure for
national development. It was in LKMD that villagers’ voices
would be heard, and forwarded upwards through the
bureaucracy. But since the LKMD, just as the LMD, was an
undemocratic institution, with members appointed by the
village headman, the LKMD could never mirror the diversity of
voices in the community. The village headman and secretary
were ex officio chairman and secretary of LKMD. The LKMD was
soon captured by village elites to further their vested interests.
Since various development projects were channeled through
LKMD it became the main vehicle for local corruption.
 6

The most important actor for the state’s intervention and

supervision of the village was the village headman. As the
government’s representative in the village, he (there were only
a few female head“men”) was dependent on his position by
higher authorities. In one of the key implementing decrees,
Department of Home Affairs Instruction no. 1, 1981, the
position of the headman is elaborated: “The village headman is
positioned as the instrument of the central government, of the
regional government and of the village government” (§3.1).
Note the order. At the end of the day it was fairly clear to
where he owed his authority: when a new headman was sworn
in he promised to be faithful and devoted to Pancasila (the
national ideology) and the 1945 constitution (UU 5/79, §8.2).
For the past 150 years headmen on Java have been
elected by popular votes. During the New Order these elections
were highly controlled. The Village Election Board — in charge
of the whole election process — consisted of the appointed
members of LMD (minus the incumbent headman), the sub-
district head, one army officer, one police officer and a number
of sub-district officials (see Department of Home Affairs
Instruction, no. 6, 1981, §4). The Board had the right to screen
and approve candidates, and they monitored the actual
balloting. The result of the election had to be approved by the
district head. As could have been expected in the New Order
administrative culture of top-down instructions, the
Instructions went on to describe in some details who had the
right to candidate, eligibility for voters, physical arrangements
for balloting, vote counting, and finally how the announcement
of the elected candidate was to be made. Manuals and
handbooks were published and distributed to all Indonesian
villages, leaving literally no room for local initiatives and
variation.
Once the district chairman approved the village headman,
he was in a very powerful position. He was ex officio chairman
of the Village Assembly and of the Village Community
Resilience Board, the government’s vehicle for developmental
planning. He had access to higher authorities, to government
projects, and to government funds. He was the apex around
which governance, politics and funds circulated. Candidates
have been reported spending up to a 100 million rupiah
($25,000 in pre-crisis currency) for campaigning in the
knowledge that they during their eight-year tenure would be
able to regain this investment with interest.
 7

But while the headman might have had sole authority in

the village and be by far the most powerful individual in the
village, he had virtually no autonomy to reach decisions
independent of higher authorities. Through UU 5/79, the village
government had become totally dependent on higher
authorities for directives and funds. The headman was in a
very paradoxical situation: extremely powerful in the village
but virtually powerless in relation to higher authorities. The
village headman had to be “faithful and devoted to Pancasila
and to the 1945 constitution”. He could not act independently
of the sub-district chairman; he had to seek approval from the
sub-district for decisions on a wide range of matters, and the
district chairman (with approval from the district chairman)
could fire the headman. Village Decisions and the Village
Budget had to be approved (pengesahan) by the district
chairman (UU 5/79, §19, clarification). The village government
could not reject or maintain its autonomy if higher authorities
needed to interfere. The authority and power of village leaders
came from their contacts with sub-district officials and the
military, and they became what I elsewhere in length has
described as “clients of the state” (Antlöv 1995, Ch. 7-9).
Village leaders were willing to put up with this, since they knew
that at long as they remained loyal to higher authorities, they
would be all-powerful in the village.
The bureaucratization of the village was a very efficient
strategy of state intervention. I have elsewhere portrayed the
village administration in a West Javanese village (Antlöv
1995:51-55). Without any claim of being complete, I recorded
178 official positions in eighteen associations, ranging from the
Village Assembly (LMD), the Village Community Resilience
Board (LKMD), the Islamic Teacher’s Board (MU) to the
Association of Active Youth (Karang Taruna) and the various
RW (administrative hamlet) and RT (administrative
neighborhood) heads. Whether lured by privileged access to
funds or forced by intimidation, virtually all leaders, local
notables and people with prestige and authority were made
clients of the state. Power was monopolized in a few hands,
directly accessible by higher authorities. The village elite
focussed more and more on relations with central power
holders at the expense of relations with the local population,
the neighbors that they lived with.
Indonesian villages were thus during the period 1975-85
firmly put under the authority of the central government — and
 8

have remained there. The village administration became for all

practical reasons miniature replicas of the central government,
enforcing decrees and policies dropped from above. Through a
series of key legislation and a variety of development projects,
more and more government agencies came to be present in
the countryside. A variety of line ministries with their own
programs were set up in every village. Teacher’s Day, Heroes’
Day, Women’s Day and of course Independence Day were
celebrated with great vigor. “TV Comes to Village”, “Military
Comes to Village”, “Students Comes to Village” and a variety
of other government programs firmly incorporated the village
into the Indonesian state. Although this was part of a
“modernization” process that simultaneously took place in
other Asian countries, “Development” was in Indonesia
intricately connected with the state. In a variety of ways,
citizens learnt that economic progress was the product of the
New Order and the president (his official designation was
“Father Development”).
Both at the government level and in the countryside, the
Indonesian administration under “Father Development” was
characterized by the prominence of political bureaucrats, often
with military background. Under the New Order, members of
the Indonesian bureaucracy, from top Jakarta officials to village
headmen, were not civil servants independent of the
government. The compulsory state doctrine of mono-loyalitas
made it clear for all public functionaries that their first loyalty
was towards the government and its party, Golkar. They relied
on the rulers and should rather be seen as political servants
(MacAndrews 1986:33). This political character of the state
administration gave it a division of function and an internal
ambiguity, a bureaucratic dwi fungsi. On the one hand the
administration had its functional role, to plan, coordinate and
implement policies. Added to this it had an implicit function to
supervise political affairs in the village. Only those who were
loyal to the government and Golkar were allowed to become
civil servants and village leaders. Decision-making, as we have
discussed, was restricted to a few office holders.
The result of all this? On paper it was the total
submission of the village and its population to the state, in
which there was no room for innovation or aspirations from
below. But this was not really deemed necessary, since the
Jakarta government constructed programs that supposedly
were to the benefit of all. I have spoken with a number of
 9

officials at the Directorate General of Village Population

Development (Pembangunan Masyarakat Desa), Department of
Home Affairs, and there was very little doubt among them that
their supervision and projects greatly benefited villagers. But
the few times these civil servants left their offices in Jakarta, it
was for official visits to pre-organized sites in which carefully
selected villagers told them how much benefit the project had
brought them.
All in all, the New Order was a seemingly well-integrated
system of ideology, legalism, administration and
developmentalism that provided very little room for public
shows of dissatisfaction. Poverty figures in the countryside
shrank dramatically, which was of course one crucial reason for
the compliance. But it is also important to note that the
political scene was tightly monopolized and controlled by
“clients of the state”. Two generations of common Indonesians
lost their political skills: they did not know how to raise issues,
lobby for their interests, build constituencies, etc.
But we must acknowledge that their submission was
never total. Where there is dominance there is resistance. The
casual observer might not find it, which is one reason why
relatively little has been written about this in Indonesia. The
methods vary, from armed struggle and outright revolution via
social sanctions and protest politics to Scott’s weapons of the
weak (feigned compliance, character assassination, foot
dragging and so on) but there are always ways through which
disadvantaged groups can resist the hegemony of ruling class.
And such was the case also in Indonesia. The reverse side of
the intervention of the state in the village is the introduction of
mass media to the countryside, more intense interfacing
between villages and cities, and the growth of a more
articulate rural middle class. The living conditions of most
villagers improved. This prompted a new consciousness and
openness among important layers of the rural population.
Although the urban middle class has been most vocal,
demands have also been heard from the countryside that the
present authoritarian and homogenizing administrative system
must be changed. In some villages, headmen and village
officials have been forced to resign, charged with corruption
and abuse of power, in the wake of Soeharto’s stepping down.
Although few of us predicted the ferocity of the changes,
most noted the increasingly dissatisfaction with the Soeharto
government, and especially with the Soeharto family. It seems
 1

that each and every peasant in Indonesia has a story to tell of

how they had been negatively affected by a Soeharto family
project: be it toll roads, clove or sandalwood monopolies, the
exclusive contract on school shoes, or illegal logging of
national forests. Numerous articles and books have been
written about the role of the student movement and
intellectuals in the fall of Soeharto, but it is important to also
recognize the growing sophistication and resistance among
villagers: a rural middle-class grew rapidly, and an increasingly
diversified media (primarily radio and TV) penetrated the
countryside. In the national election 1997, the informal
coalition between PPP and the Megawati fraction of PDI (known
as MegaBintang) gathered a lot of support among more radical
and dissatisfied villagers. In a very direct sense, the general
dissatisfaction with Soeharto, found in villages and small town
all around Indonesia, was the sounding board through which
the Jakarta movement gained its momentum. Had it not been
for the silent but monumental majority, the student movement
might not have succeeded. In my monograph on village leaders
in West Java, written in the early 1990s, I finished the
conclusion by noting that “The New Order programme of
ideological instruction, ‘betting on the strong’, and disciplinary
powers may in the end prove its downfall. The future of the
New Order depends on how well its leaders are able to carry
through these programs without alienating themselves from
the people” (Antlov 1995: 209).

2. The Reformed Legal Framework for Village

Governance

So far we have outlined village governance as it was during the

two decades between 1979 and 1998. There have been a
number of changes since. Not only democratization, but
equally important is a process of decentralization, providing
autonomous decision-making to districts (kabupatens) and
villages. Let us look a bit closer at the legal framework.
The legal framework is provided in Law no 22 of 1999,
which replaces both Law no 5/1974 and no. 5/1979. After a
presentation of the most salient points of the new law, I will
turn to implementing decrees, and discuss some of the
difficulties that might arise when the law is to be executed. It
should be noted here that we are talking about normative
ideals since UU 22/99 will only be fully implemented in May
 1

2001. So we do not yet know what kind of real changes that

the new legislation will induce. What I will do in the following is
therefore to look at the legal framework: the original law,
implementing regulations by Home Affairs, and importantly,
implementing district regulations. I will also look at some of the
changes that have already occurred in village governance,
independent of the legal framework, as a result of the
democracy movement. The village government parts of UU
22/99 are described in paragraphs 93 to 111. The following
matrix outlines the important differences between Law 5/79
and Law 22/99.

Table 1. Village governments in 1979 and 1999

Law 5/1979 Law 22/1999
Definition of A territorial entity A legal community
village
Name of village Desa and kepala desa all Districts can legislate about
and headman over Indonesia traditional names for “village”
and “headman”
Establishment Initiated by sub-district, Initiated by villagers, approv-
of new village approved by district chairman ed by district chairman and
parliament
Village Headman Headman and BPD
government
Village headman Appointed by and Appointed by and account-
accountable to district able to BPD, after approval
chairman, maximum 16 years from district chairman,
maximum 10 years
Dismissal of Proposed by sub-district, Proposed by BDP, approved
headman approved by district by district chairman
Village Appointed Village Assembly Elected Village Representa-
institutions and Village Community tive Board (BPD) with far-
Resilience Board under the reaching rights and autono-
authority of headman. No my, and other institutions
other institutions allowed that the village sees fit to
establish
Village funding Block grant from above Local sources
Village Drafted by headman, approv- Drafted and approval by BPD
legislation ed by sub-district chairman together with headman
Village budget Drafted by headman and Drafted and approved by
LMD, approved by district BPD together with headman
chairman
Indices of None–village strictly under Has the right to reject
Autonomy the authority of the sub- governmental programs not
district accompanied by funds,
personnel or infrastructure
Implementing Department of Home Affairs A combination of Department
body of Home Affairs and
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individual local governments

Village-owned Not allowed Allowed
enterprises

Even this cursory comparison shows us that the spirit of the

new law is very different from that of 5/79. UU 22/99 clearly
states (General Clarification, 9.1) that the basis for the
regulations on village government is “diversity, participation,
real autonomy, democratization and people’s empowerment”
(keanekaragaman, partisipasi, otonomi asli, demokratisasi, dan
pemberdayaan masyarakat”). Even thought these concept are
built on a high moral ground that in reality often is fairly
shallow, there is a sense of real change in the new law. The
preamble of UU 22/99 (Point e.) says that “Law 5 of 1979…was
not in accordance with the spirit [tidak sesuai dengan jiwa] of
the 1945 Constitution and it is necessary to recognize and
respect the right of specific regional origins”. The legislators
recognized that laws 5/74 and 5/79 gave a too narrow, uniform,
and authoritarian legal framework. Aspirations from below,
diversity and local conditions could not be accommodated. Law
5/79 had become part of the problem it was supposed to solve:
how to regulate village governments in the most efficient way.
So although there was very little public pressure to revise Law
5/79 (and still today, in June 2000, not everybody is aware that
the law has been revised), the Department of Home Affairs
decided to include it when they drafted the new law on local
governments.
I would say that the section in the new law on village
government is rather good. The law provides ample room for
diversity, local aspiration and responsiveness. Perhaps the first
thing to observe is the different names of the two laws: Law
5/74 was “Governance in the Regions” (Pemerintahan di
Daerah) while the new Law 22/99 is “Local Governance”
(Pemerintahan Daerah). This small difference carries an
important distinction; while the previous law detailed how the
state governed in the districts, the new law puts its emphasis
on the autonomy of regional governments. It thus outlines the
future structure of regional governments, providing them with
far-reaching authority, through a process of decentralization
and regional autonomy — even providing more autonomy for
the village. According to paragraph 1.o, a village can be called
anything: in Bali it might be banjar, in Minang nagari, and so
on. The village is “based on origins and local traditions”
 1

(berdasarkan asal-usul dan adat-istiadat setempat).The same

goes for the headman: whatever traditional concept was in
used can again be used. The village also has the right to reject
projects from outside if they are not accompanied by funds,
personnel and infrastructure. So there is considerable
democratic renewal of village government in the new law.
There are two major democratic innovations in the law,
the introduction of Village Representative Boards (BPD) and
the accountability of the village government. While Law 5/79
stated that the village government consisted only of the village
headman, the new law provides for a separation of powers: the
reformed village government consists of the headman and his
staff, and the Village Representative Board (§94). The headman
has a double accountability (§102): he is responsible to the
village population through the Village Representative Board,
and he must also each year provide an accountability report to
the district chairman. For the first time, the headman is not
primarily oriented upwards, but can be held accountable by the
village population, and must answer questions at BPD
meetings. The authority and autonomy of the BDP is far greater
than of the former Village Assembly, the LMD. It has the right
to draft village legislation (peraturan desa), it approves of the
Village Budget, and it monitors the Village Government. It even
has the right to propose to the district chairman that the
headman be removed from his post (but the decision is still
taken by the district head). There is no screening of candidates
to the headmanship or BPD, although candidates must still
fulfill certain criteria, including minimum education and
maximum age. The compulsory (and controversial) LKMD has
an uncertain future; the law states that the village has the
right to establish independent organizations as it sees fit.
LKMD is not mentioned in UU 22/99, but in an implementing
regulation, Department of Home Affairs Regulation no.
64/1999, LKMD is mentioned as an example of such social
organizations.
There are other important changes in the legal framework
that carry consequences for the village government. Perhaps
the most important of these is a little known regulation,
Presidential Decree no. 5 1999, signed by President B.J.
Habibie on 26 January 1999, which states that civil servants
are no longer allowed to join political parties. This was part of
the revision of the election system, but has had consequences
far beyond the June 1999 election. It means in fact that the
 1

former principle of mono-loyalitas to Golkar was annulled, and

that civil servants (including village officials) are free to join
and vote for any political party of their choice. Legally, their
loyalty has shifted away from higher authorities. In conjunction
with the UU 22/99, this is a marked democratization, and
allows principally for the establishment of a village government
that at frequent intervals will be subject to the exercise of
democratic authority. Village leadership is thus moving away
from the “client of the state” paradigm of the New Order, to
one of autonomy from higher authorities and self-
determination. Whether this in fact will mean that village
leaders will become more democratic is still to be seen when
the law is implemented.
One of the concerns is that a greater emphasis on self-
determination among traditional communities could come in
contradiction with aspirations towards a more representative
and transparent governance system. Paragraph 1 of UU 22/99
allows a village to be based on traditional values, and there are
movements in certain parts of Indonesia to return to pre-New
Order, even pre-colonial “traditional” village government
structures. There are tensions within indigenous people’s
groups as to what extent traditional values should be
reinstated, values that often are highly feudal and non-
democratic. If popularly elected members of BPD do not value
democratic norms, how should higher authorities react? This is
not clear in the law. As mentioned above, a number of
democratic values are reiterated in the General Clarification,
but we do not know how these should be upheld. The ultimate
question, and this is one that is subject to discussion in many
parts of the world, is the balance between self-determination
and democracy.
Another important national change that goes far beyond
UU 22 is the possibility that Indonesia will change its defense
system from a territorial system to one of mobile units located
in barracks. This will have the effect that the village soldiers
(the Babinsa), who as we saw above often have used their
power in village politics, might be withdrawn. The pull-out is
planned to take place over a ten-year period of time, and there
can during such a long period be many policy changes, but at
least the reform has been publicly announced, and the Babinsa
soldier can be expected to no longer hold the same power in
village governments (see Tempo, 28 May 2000).
 1

Let us now move beyond the legislation to the

implementing regulations. Home Affairs decree no. 64 (Kepmen
64/1999) was announced under the Habibie administration by
then Minister of Home Affairs on 6 September 1999. Kepmen
64/99 translates as the Minister’s Ordinance: General Manual
of Regulations about Villages (Pedoman Umum Pengaturan
Mengenai Desa). It consists of 73 paragraphs in 22 pages, and
details the Department of Home Affairs thinking about village
autonomy and governance. If the 19 paragraphs of UU 22 are
little known, Kepmen 64/99 is virtually unknown. NGOs and
researchers have not analyzed it, and it has not received any
public scrutiny. And yet this is the legal basis for which the
local government of some 150 million people will be decided.
We have to remember that this document, as any other
legal record, is not objective or value neutral. While a law
(undang-undang) must be approved by the parliament,
implementing regulations can be signed directly by the
executive official. A Ministerial Ordinance is not subject to
democratic authority. Kepmen 64 thus provides the thinking of
Minister Syarwan Hamid and his staff. The Department of Home
Affairs was the major actor behind laws 5 1974 and 1979, and
thus the establishment of a uniform and authoritarian local
government structure. Home Affairs is a line ministry with
branches down to the village level. It was one of the most
powerful ministries during the New Order, controlling the
appointment of local officials, approving regional budgets, and
monopolizing regional decision-making. A local government
could not take any serious decisions without the (implicit or
explicit) approval of Home Affairs. And there were often price
tags attached to the approval. And not much have changed in
the ministry. Kepmen 64 is a product of a ministry in which
only a few top officials have been replaced, but the
bureaucracy still remains.
Tumpal Saragi of Bina Masyarakat Mandiri has written
what is to my knowledge that only critique of the regulation
(Tumpal 2000). He finds that it differs from the spirit through
too much detailing the structure of the village government.
Rather than actually allowing for variation and differences in
traditions and customs, Kepmen 64 describes in some details
what the village government should look like, through for
instance stating the membership figure of the BPD should have
or the thirteen requirements of a headman candidate. 3 What
3
These remind very much of those in UU 5/79. For instance, the candidate
 1

the Kepmen should have done, argues Tumpal, is to have

provided general regulations for how various village
institutions could be established and left the details for local
governments and villages to determine.
One of the problems of Kepmen 64 is that of conflicts
between levels and the hierarchy of decisions. We saw above
that the village has the right to legislate, and this is according
to Kepmen 64 done jointly by the headman and BPD (with a 2/3
majority). Importantly, these Village Decrees do not need to be
approved by the district chairman — it is enough with the
village headman. But neither the law nor the implementing
regulations tells us how conflicts are to be solved. If for
instance a village decides to tax a factory located in the
village, but the factory owner refuses, what is the legal
process? And perhaps even more importantly, what will the
political bargaining power of the village government be over a
strong district government that does not want to have village-
based taxation? Such questions should be addressed in
legislation, not in practice.
The differences between UU 22 and Kepmen 64 are
mainly in the small words and in what is not mentioned. The
separation of powers between the Headman and the BPD which
is a crucial aspect of UU 22 is muddled in Kepmen 64: it says
for instance that Village Decrees should be drafted jointly by
the headman and BPD and in consensus (§16 and 18). While in
UU 22, the spirit is that the Village Government should be
accountable to the BPD, Kepmen 64 states that the BPD “sits
on the same level and as a partner to the Village Government”
(BPD berkedudukan sejajar dan menjadi mitra dari Pemerintah
Desa). In direct contradiction to UU 22, Kepmen 64 even
asserts in paragraph 60 that the “Village Budget is determined
each year by the Village Headman” (UU 22 says in §107 point 3
that the village budget is “determined jointly by the headman
and the BPD”). As mentioned, there also seems to be an
attempt to sneak back in through the back door the much
criticized LKMD: §45 asserts that the village can establish
“community organizations in accordance with local conditions,
such as LKMD and PKK or others” (my emphasis). Again these
community organizations are to be the “partners” of the
Village Governments (§46). To make them even closer to LKMD,
Kepmen 64 says that the duties of the community organization

may not have been a member of the Indonesian Communist Party, must
be loyal to Pancasila and believe in God.
 1

are to “plan, implement and direct a people-centered

development”. This is exactly what LKMD was mandated to do
in 1980, and goes against the spirit of UU 22 which allowed for
the establishment of various kinds of social organizations.
These distortions are distressing. And it gets worse when
we move one step further down, to the district decrees.
Kepmen 64 needs 12 such implementing district decrees. There
are some 260 rural districts (kabupaten) in Indonesia 4 , some of
them very small without much experience or competence in
self-determination. There are great differences in the capacity
to legislate. The authority of Home Affairs to supervise this
legislation is circumscribed both by UU 22 and by general
“anti-center” sentiments, and it is very important that civil
society groups organize themselves to do this monitoring. Not
all of the local governments have drafted their implementing
decrees yet, and there will probably be variation in both quality
and content. We do not have the time or space here to look
systemically at even a fraction of what might eventually be
close to 3000 district decrees, but it might still be interesting
to look at one particular case.
The twelve district decrees (Peraturan Daerah — Perda) in
kabupaten Sumedang (in the mountains of West Java) were
signed by the district chairman on 4 March 2000, after having
been drafted by the district secretariat and approved by the
local parliament. In the decrees the basic text of the Kepmen
64 is repeated word by word, including the misinterpretations,
such as that the BPD is a partner to the local government and
that village decrees are formulated jointly and in consensus,
and then further specified. In this process of detailing the law,
some additional distortion occurs. For instance, Perda no
30/2000 regarding the establishment, election, and duties of
the Village Representative Board, suddenly introduces the
requirement of an “administrative selection” of candidates to
BPD. This might sound innocent and a bit bureaucratic, but we
must remember that headman elections during the New Order
were tightly controlled, in part through a political screening of
candidates. Talk about “selection” in Indonesia evoke
memories of a not to distance past in which higher authorities
could control who were to be elected as headman. The decree
on community organizations (no 38/2000) is even more
distorted. After repeating the misinterpretation that community

4
In addition, there are some 100 cities (kota) containing some 8000 urban
wards (kelurahan).
 1

organizations are active only in development planning an

detailing the internal structure of the organization, paragraph 8
states that existing community organizations (such as LKMD
and PKK) should “be conformed (disesuaikan) in line with these
regulations”. For all practical reasons, this means that
“community organizations” in Sumedang are the existing (and
corrupted) LKMD and PKK, and nothing else. One more example
is the Perda no. 39 on the “Empowerment, Preservation and
Development of Tradition, Customs and Traditional
Institutions” (Pemberdayaan dan Pelestarian serta
Pengembangan Adat Istiadat, Kebiasan-Kebiasan Masyarakat
dan Lembaga Adat). Paragraph 4.4 of this decree is clearly
written in the spirit of the cultural engineering of the New
Order, the “objective of developing traditions and customs is to
raise their roles to support the flow of economic development
and national stability” (my emphasis). This really smacks New
Order — social institutions are instrumental in character and
they must be developed with certain political aims in mind.
We can go even one step further down, to the Technical
Instruction (Petunjuk Pelaksanaan — Jutlak) that are distributed
by a district government to villages to provide technical
assistance in executing a district decree. Let us look at the
Petunjuk Pelaksanaan no. 2/2000 on “BPD Elections” in
Bandung, a neighboring district to Sumedang. Here the
deviations continue. We remember that the Perda in Sumedang
mentions that “a BPD Election Commission shall be
established” (a commission not mentioned in the law or in the
ministerial ordinance). The technical Jutlak takes this even one
step further, turning the passive voice of the Perda into active:
the Election Commission “shall be established by the Village
Government”. The Jutlak repeats that the Commission has the
right to “administratively select” who can be a BPD candidate.
It also states that the various village powers (unser-unser
kekuatan masyarakat) must consult (bermusyawarah) to
identify potential candidates. If we read this critically, in a
worst case scenario (and bearing in mind how often this
happened during the New Order), this provides the legal
framework for a headman to single-handedly 5 appoint his loyal
followers to the Commission, which decides on who is allowed
to stand for candidacy to the BPD through rejecting candidates

5
well, the term is musyawarah but this means in reality to voice of
the strongest
 1

on administrative grounds. This is not what the legislators had

in mind when they drafted UU 22!
We are getting a bit technical here, and I do not want to
bore the reader with more details. I hope I have conveyed the
gradual democratic deterioration of the village government
regulations as they are moved down the administrative ladder.
From a fairly good law outlining the legal framework for a more
democratic and responsive village government, the end result,
when the law is to be implemented, is an overly-regulated and
in important parts pseudo-democratic body of regulations,
decrees and instructions that in details outlines who village
government must look like, and not acknowledging local
variation and self-determination.
One important aspect here is obviously how democratic
and responsive local governments will be. For an average
peasant it does not really matter if a regulation or project is
designed in Jakarta or in the district capital: what matters is
how good, efficient and desired the project is. Although
decentralization promises to move decision-making closer to
people and make government more direct and responsive, this
has to be proved in practice. An authoritarian local government
could be even more oppressive than its central counterpart,
because it has direct access to subordinate levels of
government. So we should not automatically assume that
village autonomy will be institutionalized simply because it is
in the law. As we have seen, there are worrying tendencies
that in fact local governments will continue to rule over
villages in ways not very different than in the past. The
authority to rule might have moved from the center to the
district, but not much else has changed. In the countryside, we
can expect that the village government will simply implement
whatever Technical Instruction they receive from above. This is
what they have been doing for the past 30 years, and old
habits die hard.
In conclusion, we have a fairly good legal framework: a
separation of power, a strengthening of the legislative body,
democratic control over the headman, acknowledgment of local
conditions and increased self-determination. This is a distinct
shift away from the old framework, and promises a renewal of
how villages are governed. We should be able to expect more
citizen participation, more responsive governments and less
abuse of power and funds. But as often is the case, this will not
come for free. We have seen how implementing regulations
 2

and technical instructions have introduced distortions into this

system, which opens the door for authoritarian control over the
village government. The solution here is to maintain the
democratic authority over these public decisions, through
having both local legislators (members of the DPR-Ds) and
concerned activists, community organizers and villagers to
establish joint fronts to hold the local government accountable.

3. Elections, Local Politics and Leadership.

In this last section of the paper I will move away from the legal
discourse into an empirical discussion of contemporary village
governance. I will do this through discussing the politics
around a headman elections and appointment of village
officials in “Sariendah”, a modern village just southwest of
Bandung in West Java, a village I have studied during the past
15 years. This story will lead over to a few final reflections of
ways to address the problems of democratic local governance
in Indonesia.
This particular election took place in December 1998,
seven months into reformasi but five months before UU 22/99
was approved. According to UU 5/79, headmen elections are
held every eight years through secret balloting among several
candidates, in ways very similar to national election. We have
seen that prospective candidates must go through what is
actually in Indonesian called a “skreening” procedure, in which
they — for all practical purposes — are tested for political
loyalty. Only candidates who had the backing of the Golkar
party and of the sub-district administration would make it to
the actual polling. We have also mentioned the large figures of
money involved in village elections, and the intervention of
higher authorities. Candidates often spend millions of rupiah in
campaigns.
The only legal novelty in the 1998 headman election was
a new regulation issued by the Bandung district chairman —
based on a decree from the Ministry of Home Affairs — that
headman elections must be “clean and fair” (bersih dan adil).
Under the initiative of the incumbent headman (who did not
candidate), all candidates in Sariendah had to sign a joint
statement promising not to use any foul play or money in the
campaign. The candidates signed it readily: they were happy
not having to spend so much money in vote buying. But not
everybody in Sariendah liked it: some said they preferred the
 2

old way when candidates had to prove their generosity through

distributing moneys. However, in spite of the written
statement, not much changed. There were communal meals,
sponsored competitions, free cigarettes, etc. The only
difference was that there were no great promises of
development projects that would be implemented after the
candidate’s victory. This had been one of the New Order main
election tactics, and was often utilized by the favored Golkar
candidate in headman elections. In 1998, however, Golkar did
not have a favored candidate, a reflection of the changing
political framework and the then rapidly deteriorating
reputation of Golkar. No one wanted to be associated with a
party that just a few months earlier had been so literally
ousted from power.
Three months ahead of balloting, in September 1998, four
villagers announced their candidacy, three village officials and
one Islamic entrepreneur. This is not the place to describe the
campaign in detail: as mentioned it did not differ much from
campaigns described by Hüsken (1994) and Antlöv (1995). But
in an interesting development, the campaign of two of the
candidates came to a very quick halt just a few days before the
actual balloting when they were disqualified. If we only look at
the official reasons, we might believe that the public
administration had already been reformed in Indonesia. Both
candidates were disqualified for not fulfilling one of the
required preconditions, a secondary school diploma. But almost
everybody in Sariendah agrees that the real reason for the
disqualification was political: one of the remaining two
candidates had used his political influence to tip off the
Bandung-based Screening Committee. He did this, or so he
argued in public, because of reformasi and because he wanted
to see formal rules upheld. But people knew his real reasons —
to get rid of his strongest competitors. Because of reformasi,
the Bandung screening committee had little choice but to
reinforce the law.
Both black-listed candidates immediately submitted their
complaints to the sub-district and district offices, to the sub-
district police commander, even to Golkar. Asep, one of the
disqualified candidates, claimed that his 29 years as sub-
village head (kepala dusun) should count as the equivalent of a
secondary school education, and argued that several
candidates in previous election had not had such diplomas. The
other candidate argued that he had cleared the skreening in
 2

the last headman election in 1991, when he also was a

candidate. But it was too late. Their disqualification was
announced on a Wednesday, the actual written test was on
Friday and the balloting on the Sunday. There were
(unconfirmed) rumors that at least one of the two candidates
paid one million rupiah to the Election Commission that same
week, but that the winning candidate had paid two million. The
two disqualified candidates were furious, since they had spent
several millions of rupiah in campaigning, and now they were
disqualified for political reasons. Referring back to our
discussion above, this really shows the dangers of having a
screening procedure.
Only two candidates remained for the election, and
Endang, the incumbent village secretary, gained the most
votes. Interestingly enough, it was not Endang who had tipped
off the Screening Committee. There were for a few days some
intense political maneuverings, but on the Friday before the
balloting, one of the two disqualified candidates launched
together with the incumbent headman a campaign to vote for
Endang. No one really liked him, since he had been quite high-
handed as a village secretary, but he was at least better than
the candidate who had used foul play to inhibit his competitors
from joining the election.
But perhaps it was the wrong choice anyway. Endang was
installed as headman on Christmas Eve 1998. Just ten days
later, he single-handedly dismissed the Village Assembly
(LMD), the Village Community Resilience Board (LKMD), and
fired all village officials. He wanted a clear break from the past,
he said; more importantly, probably, he wanted his own
supporters into these important institutions.
This would not have caused much public resistance a few
years ago. We saw above that a village headman, as long as he
remained loyal to Golkar and the central government, had
almost unlimited powers. The reason why candidates were
willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in campaign funds
was that the opportunities to regain this money was even
greater, through privileged access to development projects and
other state funds. The autonomy of the village head was great
— for instance to appoint loyal followers to official positions
without following regulations.
But apparently Endang was not fully aware of the new
political climate. Asep, one of the disqualified candidates,
teamed up with other fired officials and launched a campaign
 2

against Endang. They accused him of breaking the law by not

calling a public meeting before he announcement the LKMD
and LKMD void. There were other more serious allegations.
They claimed that Endang had embezzled funds as village
secretary, and that he during his first month as village
headman already had misappropriated 25 million rupiah (then
the equivalent of $3,000) in social safety net funds (PDM-DKE).
They also alleged that Endang had an uncle who had been a
member of the Communist Party, which if true should have
been more than enough to disqualify him from taking part in
the village election, indeed even from any holding public office.
These accusations were made public in two official letters to
the Majalaya sub-districts and Bandung district chairmen. Four
fired village officials signed the letter.
They also contacted a local journalist living in Bandung
writing for a small tabloid in Jakarta, fairly close to PDI-P,
running a lot of stories about official corruption and abuse of
power. The journalist loved the story. It was exactly what his
readers wanted to hear, and he wrote two articles, one
published in February and the other in April 1999. The stories
were used as examples of the corrupt state of village
administration in Indonesia, and Endang was in the articles
linked to “the corrupt Golkar” (as part of the on-going election
campaign). What the journalist failed to see was the irony of
the story: the people behind the campaign were fired village
officials who had supported, and equally benefited from,
Endang’s corruption. I have talked with two of the fired officials
at lengths, and what they in fact wanted was to regain their
positions — privileged access to power and development funds.
It was not so much limiting the power of the headman but
competing over that power.
During the national election, the district chairman in
Bandung put a lid on the incident. He was fully aware of the
tense situation in Sariendah, and did not want the story to be
used during the elections. Sentiments were already running
strong around the election, and the merging of local issues and
national election was dangerous. But PDI-P used the story
locally as a case of how corrupt Golkar was, since all the
parties involved were former Golkar supporters. PDI-P won
quite conformably in Sariendah (44 per cent), with none of the
village officials daring to campaign. Headman Endang and his
staff stayed clear of the campaign altogether, even to the
extent that the village Golkar chairman complained loudly that
 2

he was getting no support whatsoever, not even moral, from

the people who just two years ago had lived so comfortably
under the Golkar umbrella. Golkar was virtually absent during
the campaign in Sariendah — and in large parts of Java
In September 1999 (three months after the national
elections) the sub-district chairman came to Sariendah and
gave a speech to the new LMD, talking about the violence in
Ambon and Banyuwangi and that this would not be allowed to
happen in Bandung. Asep had commenced the campaign again,
but reasons of “national security” were persuaded (well, more
or less forced to — after all they were former officials and knew
the rules) to freeze the case until a new national government
was in place.
President Wahid was elected in November 1999. By now it
was almost a year after the headman election, and Asep and
Endang’s energy was partly gone. During another village
meeting in December 1999, the sub-district chairman said that
it was better to have the case solved by the incoming Village
Representative Board. BDP elections are now scheduled in the
district of Bandung for August-September 2000. We will see if
the case will be referred to the new BPD, and whether BPD will
have the capacity, authority and composition to manage such a
difficult conflict. Asep has said that he will run for the BPD,
while others of the fired officials are deeply disappointed with
the district and village government and wants to have nothing
to do with it. Two of them have not come to a single village
meeting, and they have stubbornly refused any contact with
the new village government. One of them especially, has
continued his struggle to annul his dismissal, and says he will
do so for quite some time. But he does not really know what to
do beyond writing formal complaints or poison-pen letters.
There were a lot of born-again reformists in Indonesia in
1999. Including the people behind the campaign in Sariendah.
Both Endang and Otong were former koruptors (this colorful
Indonesian word) who suddenly changed side. In 1999, they
started to talk about the corruption of the village headman and
his abuse of power. The same kind of elite division that we saw
in Jakarta when Soeharto’s most loyal lieutenants turned
against him happened also in Sariendah. The monopoly of the
village government crumbled. This has not yet given way to
any meaningful democracy, but at least people in Sariendah
are talking freely about reforming the system. It is an irony
 2

that it was two of the most corrupt village officials that opened
up for these changes.

4. Concluding Remarks

We saw in the last section that the struggle for accountability

in Sariendah has so far been in vain. Accountability must be
protected by institutions and higher authorities, but the
Bandung government found a number of excuses to postpone
and was simply not very interested in taking up the case. They
cleverly passed the ball on to the untested BPD, which will be
established in mid-2001. One main problem for the creation of
mechanism of accountability and democratic authority over the
public sphere is that the village government has been so “em-
power-ed” by the New Order that literally all attempts to
counter the headman and his staff can still be quite easily
crushed. The other side of this coin is of course that ordinary
people were “dis-empowered” and lost their democratic right
during the New Order — and more seriously (since their rights
have been reinstalled) they also lost their political skills. We
have seen the result of this dangerous combination of
democratic potentials and disempowered citizens in the acts of
violence and desperation that are still occurring in different
Indonesian localities, such as attacks on government offices
and unilateral settlement on land.
When the BPD now is being introduced and there is for
the first time a possibility of a meaningful separation of
powers, we should perhaps not have to great hopes and expect
immediate results. It will take a long time before the
governance equation is turned around: that the village
government is relatively dis-empowered and the BDP
empowered. We should not be surprised if the BPD to initially
bow to the powers of the executive. Members of BPD need to
be trained and empowered: they need to be reassured that
they will not, in the tightly-knit village community, will not be
utsätta for social or political sanctions by the executive or
other members of the elite. The support of the BDP by higher
authorities can also be put in question, as we have seen from
the democratic distortions in various Kepmen, Perda and Jutlak.
The district government will continue to need a loyal headman
and village government, and will therefore probably also in the
future support the executive branch over the legislative. The
 2

question is: how can we all as academics and concerned

citizens support the BDP?
It should come as no big surprise that there is a mixture
of changes and plus ça change… in contemporary village
governance. One the one hand, we have seen a radically
reformed legal framework and a newly-won freedom of
expression. People are no longer afraid to protest, and village
leaders must listen to the voices of people. On the other hand,
we have very strong village governments created by the New
Order, oriented upwards and used to taking orders and carry
them out, whatever the costs. So where does that leave the
new village governments? We do not really know. In a very real
sense, village governance is in a period of rapid transition now.
It could go either way: towards more democratic and
accountable local government, or maintain a centralized and
authoritarian leadership structure. It hangs in the balance, and
one of the most important differences can be made by the
democratic movement which must regain the initiative it had
two years ago. There is considerable resistance against the
continued abuse of power and opaque accountability
structures. There are demands heard in almost all villagers for
renewal, and there is hope that local and village governments
will no longer be able to monopolize elections and power. One
great hope is the free media and the establishment of
grassroots movements and citizen-based social change
organizations that could put pressure on local governments to
pursue more responsive and transparent governance policies.

REFERENCES

Angger Jati Wijaya et. al., Reformasi Tata Pemerintahan Desa

Menuju Demokrasi. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2000
Antlöv, Hans, Exemplary Center, Administrative Periphery.
Rural Leadership and the New Order in Java. London:
Curzon Press, 1995.
Hüsken, Frans, “Village Elections in Central Java: State Control
or Grassroot Democracy”, in Hans Antlöv and Sven
Cederroth (eds.), Rural Leadership on Java: Gentle Hints,
Authoritarian Rule. London: Curzon Press, 1994.
Kansil, C.S.T. Desa Kita dalam Peraturan Tata Pemerintahan
Desa. Jakarta: Ghalia Indonesia 1988
 2

MacAndrews, Colin (ed.) Central Government and Local

Development in Indonesia. Singapore: Oxford
University Press, 1986
Tumpal Saragi, Kajian normatif undang-undang pemerintahan
daerah dan turunya, paper presented at the FPPM workshop
on Village Autonomy, Yogyakarta 3-4 May, 2000