An Expanded Bureaucrazy

The downfall of Soeharto's centralistic regime has been followed by an expanded bureaucracy all over the country. In the last 10 years, the reform movement has created more provinces and regencies. What we have is actually an expanded bureaucrazy, not less bureaucracy.

While the regional autonomy spirit is focused on regencies and put provincial level administrations almost no significant power in hands except as 'liason' between central government & regencies, we create more and more provinces instead. So, we have 7 new provinces (one in Papua, one in Maluku, two in Sulawesi, two in Sumatra, and one in Java) and lot more new regencies.
This year alone, we will have 35 new regencies with Rp95 billion cost of deliberating the laws on every single regency. In 2005, government established 65 new regencies/city administrations with Rp250 billion cost. In four years of 2001-2004, almost 100 new regencies established. So in less than one decade after Soeharto's downfall, we have expanded the administration by nearly 100%.
Few more new provinces are under preparation such as Flores in East Nusa Tenggara and Cirebon in West Java. Three regencies in West Java (Bogor, Depok, and Karawang) agreed to establish a new province separated from West Java. Others may arise from North Sumatra (Tapanuli), Aceh, and Central Kalimantan.
One may argue that these new regional/local administrations help to create new jobs, but this is not in line with the reform idea to have a more efficient bureaucracy and give more rooms for the society. Besides, more state money should be allocated to pay the civil servants' salary at the time we need more development funds.
Worse, this expanded bureaucracy has prevented the whole nation's effort to streamline procedures in business activities. So, what's actually the point of having more provinces and regencies?

READ MORE!!!