47

論文

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure
and Democratization:
The Case of Indonesia
Ishaq RAHMAN

I. Introduction
Indonesian transition to democracy gained its momentum in 1998 following
the end of Soeharto regime that has been in power for 32 years. From 1966 to
1998, which was known as New Order (or “Orde Baru”) era, Suharto undertook
his authoritarian rule by controlling almost every dimension of social andpolitical life, including controlling the flow of information, restraining to
freedom of press and freedom of speech, and limiting to freedom of assembly.
The practice was very common in many authoritarian regimes that monopolize(and sometime manipulate) information in terms of production, access, anddistribution.
When the transition to democracy started, the main focus of democratization
was to establish a free and fair election, followed by many structural adjustments
in many areas, including economic sectors, bureaucracy and law enforcement,
judicial power independence, strengthening the role of parliament and civilsociety, and decentralization. The other critical aspect which was also
successfully implemented was to revoke the role of military in day to day
political matters. In society level, the end of Suharto has overcome political andfreedom euphoria. President B.J. Habibie, the successor of Suharto, promoted
freedom by scrapping Law number 11 Year 1966 about Press, and at the sametime enacting new Law number 40 Year 1999. The old law had been considered
as authoritarian tools to control freedom of press and freedom of speech. The
new Law gave more freedom for people to utilize press and mass media toexpress their opinion and ideas. This new law had revoked government’s role incontrolling the flows of information through press and mass media.
Freedom of expression could not be adopted without freedom of information.

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One of precondition to establish and consolidate democracy in a transitionalcountry is to provide higher public access to information. However, thewillingness to enable social and political environment to enhance public accessto information has not been considered as a main priority in most democratization
process, including in Indonesia. It took about 10 years after 1998 reformation
before a new law related to freedom of information (which focused on public
information disclosure) was enacted. The bill had actually been submitted toparliament in 2001. Due to high debate which sometime led to political tension
between the parliament and the executive agency, the deliberation process hadtaken about 8 years before it was passed in 2008 by the name Public Information
Disclosure (PID) Law. This was noted as the longest legislation process untilthat time (VivaNews 2008). The main implication of this new Law is: every
public agency must disclose all information available which is considered as
public information.
With regard to democratization process, political reform through public
information disclosure faces much more constraints in its implementation.
Many implementing agencies had ignored to provide instruments as stipulated
in the law. For example, after 5 years since the law went into force, only 47.55%
of the total public agency has established a special unit called: Information andDocumentation Management Officer (“Pejabat Pengelola Informasi dan Dokumentasi”
or PPID) which was authorized by this PID Law (Directorate of Public
Communication 2014).
This article tries to elaborate the implementation of Indonesian PID Law
in the context of democracy consolidation. The focus of analysis is placed on the
reluctance of public agency to comply with the rule as stipulated in the law,which has a potential to diminish public trust. Such situation leads to endanger
the process of consolidation of this young democracy. This article employs the
combination of public opinion survey, secondary data analysis, and case study
through descriptive qualitative approach.
By exploring the PID Law legislation process and analyzing the case of
information dispute between an Indonesian NGO with police headquarters,
this article intends to explain the main factors which tend to hamper the
implementation of freedom of information, particularly public information
disclosure after the 2008 PID Law was adopted.

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49

II. Information Disclosures and Democratization
International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR) adopted in1966 had been accepted as an international norm to adopt freedom of information.
Together with International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights(ICESCR) which was also adopted in 1966, and Universal Declaration of Human
Rights which was adopted in 1948, ICCPR has been recognized as International
Bill of Human Rights, which had been ratified by 167 of UN members (United
Nations 2014). In the current global circumstances, these three documents(with its annexes and additional protocols) has become a framework for
promoting human rights around the world.
Although the global norm of freedom of information has been recognized formore than 40 years, the implementation is still short of expectation, especiallywhen it is related to the information produced and controlled by government.
Some established democracies have provided appropriate laws and proceduresfor public information disclosure, but the debate over the limit of freedom still
occurred. Also, the limits of secrecy in running the government are still
debatable. For instance, when Julian Assange revealed bunch of secret cables
between US Embassies around the world and the State Secretary, still public
discourse arises about the minimum limit of public information secrecy versus
the maximum disclosure policy as part of “people’s right to know” (Leigh andHarding 2011).
On the other hand, for some transitional countries, the discourse of public
information disclosure still focus on how important the information freedom
and openness to promote democracy. The main constraint of democratization
through transformation (as categorized by Diamond and Linz and Stephan) is
the existence of old actors who still tried to take part in the new system. These
actors have a strong mindset that handling public information is one of power
resource to maximize their political control over civilian aspiration. They still
consider society as “collection of people who don’t need to know anything”.
In modern world, global shifting to democratization started in the 1970s
and was recognized by Huntington as “the third wave of democratization. It
was started by the transition of Portugal in 1974, followed by many countries
around the world, from Greece to Spain, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan,

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Chechnya, Poland, Hungary, and even to Benin, Nigeria, Malawi and some
African countries (Huntington 1991). However, democratization had been
coming late to reach Indonesia. Until the end 1997, many analysts still believedthat Indonesia was likely to become the convenient place for the operation of
authoritarian regimes for a long time more (Uhlin 1997).
The Asian economic crisis in 1997 had contributed to the rising of movement
to shift the regime. The failure of the regime to take solution in order to respondto economic crisis has caused the diversion of crisis to enter the political arena.
Actually, before the Asian economic crisis in 1997, Indonesia had been in thephase of pre-transition. That is why, during the transition, it had been easier toadopt new democratic mechanism. It was only about one and half year after the
resignation of Suharto, Indonesia had become an electoral democracy (Bunte
and Ufen 2009).
In order to explain the transition to democracy, including what has occurredin Indonesia, most scholars agree to utilize actor-oriented approach, as can befound in the work of O’Donnel and Schmitter (1986), Przeworski (1986 and1992), and Huntington (1993). Their theories utilize the concept of procedural
democracy as introduced by Robert Dahl as “poliarchy”. In this context,
democracy is understood as a collective system of governance which requires atleast three conditions, namely: (1) free, fair, and meaningful election to decide
every effective position in government; (2) high level inclusive politicalparticipation in every selection process of leader and policy; (3) freedom ofassembly and freedom to establish association without meaningful barriers(Dahl 1971, 3-20).
These theorists focus on strategy, belief, and elite calculations that leadtransition process in critical period. They believe that objective conditions suchas economic growth and power of state have direct connection withdemocratization, but such conditions could not fully explain why democratization
succeeded in one point, and sometimes failed in the other point (Kim 1997).
According to these theorists, it is necessary to evaluate the strategic choices ofactors under circumstances of those conditions and also the interactions between
them to explain why democratization succeeded and failed.
In the democratization framework, the terms such as freedom of expression,
freedom of information, freedom of association, and free media have been
accepted as important part to promoting transparency and accountability. The

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51

focus of these terms is to provide a well-informed society. Alexander Meikle
John, one of the prominent philosophers who initiated the ideas of freedom
mentioned that: if democracy is understood as government by the people, so theprecondition is “informed electorate” (Meiklejohn 1961). To assure that voters
have sufficient and appropriate knowledge, so there should not be any burdenin the flow of information and ideas.
It has been accepted in political science that there is a reciprocal connection
between freedom of information and democracy. On one hand, freedom of
information has a positive impact on the promotion of democracy, and viceversa. And the more democratic a political system becomes, the more opportunity
is available for people to access information. But, such kind of relationshipshould not be understood in isolation to one another. Scholars of democratic
politics typically do not explore the possibilities of information serving as amotive force or an independent variable. For most researchers, information atbest constitutes context rather than a cause, a factor that remain on thesidelines (Bimber 2003, 12).
Some studies imply that freedom of information has played a strategic rolein democratic system. For this reason, as an inherent element to democratic
consolidation, it is necessary to promote enabling environment to promote
access to public information together with establishing minimum democratic
instruments (such as free and fair election, freedom of expression, freedom ofassembly, enhancing rule of law, adopting decentralization in local government,
empowering civil society, and political party reform). As increasing public accessto public information will significantly promote transparency and accountabilityof governance, this had been accepted as main pillar of democratic system [see(Gingras 2012)].
There are several reasons to explain the importance of public information
disclosure to promote democratic consolidation. Firstly, one of the characteristics
of authoritarian regime is controlling the circulation of information. The main
assumption is that less public knows about the intention of government’s
policies, the easiest the ruling government manipulates public opinion andcreates public perception. Secondly, by controlling public information,
government officers have wider opportunity to misuse their power, including
directing public rights for the elites’ benefit. Public have no intention about what
is truly happened “behind the screen” in every public decision making process.

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Openness of public information requires availability of the trustworthy
information. There is also another danger when public agencies distributes false
information, both politically and economically (Morris dan Shin 2002, 1532).
Access to public information that is suspicious in its truthfulness will direct
political and economic actors to lay on private information or information
provided by non-state institutions. For this reason, Morris and Shin noted thatwhen agents have no personal or private information – so the only source of
information they have is public information – then greater precision of public
information will increases social welfare. However, if actors have access to
private information, it is not frequently true that greater precision of public
information is desirable. To a certain extent, increased precision of public
information could have negative impact to welfare (Morris dan Shin 2002, 1522).
Free access of public information can have impact to minimize corruption
in public offices, caused by the lack of transparency and accountability.
Politicians and public officials are accountable for their behavior in office, sothat they know that public watches everything they do. When the merit system
works, they know that they can be removed from office if they misbehave. Thenthey have an incentive not to misuse their office for private gain. Democraticsystem is then fundamental in keeping politicians in check. Just as important,however, is transparency. The adoption of freedom of information law has notdirectly affected the declining corruption rate (Costa 2012). Nevertheless,reducing corruption by adopting freedom of information law has a persistentimpact. Study has proven that the greater access to information, the lower thecorruption level will be (DiRienzo, et al. 2007).

III. The Enactment of Public Information Disclosure Law
Mendel described a guidance to prepare a strong and adaptable information
law, which should cover 9 features, i.e. (1) maximum disclosure; (2) obligation
to publish; (3) promotion of open government; (4) limited scope of exception; (5)process to facilitate access; (6) costs; (7) open meetings; (8) disclosure takes
precedence; (9) protection to whistleblower (Mendel 2003, 25-36). Every country
usually tries to adopt these principles in every information law they provides,
but some difference can be identified, especially in its implementation.
In order to enforce the information laws, there are three distinct models

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53

adopted, namely by court and by particular agency (such as informationcommission). Another model is to mix the enforcement by informationcommission and backed up by court. The United States’ Freedom of Information
Act which was originally passed in 1996 and had been amended four times
adopts “by court enforcement” model. It means any disputes regarding the law
will be brought to the court for final decision. UK’s Freedom of Information Acts
(FOIA), which was enacted in 2000, adopts the “by information commission”
model. While Canada’s Access to Information Laws (ATIA), which was passed
in 1982, adopts the mix model (Holsen 2007). After several years of deliberation,
Indonesian PID Law ended with adopting the Canadian model for enforcement
mechanism, which is to mix the establishment of a particular agency (named
Information Commission) and backed up by general court.
The initiation of Indonesian PID Law was started by prolonged debate,both among politicians, and between the parliament and the government (theexecutive body). The reluctance of politicians and public officers to move out
from the “comfort zone” of monopolized public information could be the reason
that explains the long process. Also, it had been very difficult to discharge the“culture of secrecy” from most of politicians and government officers. Someexperts, including Banisar, identified that secrecy in government affairs lead tomisuse of authority, affected bad governance, and contributed to the increasingof corruption (Banisar 2007).
There were several issues that ignited the debate, ranging from the term of
the law, the definition of public agency, the establishment of Information
Commission, and sanction (VivaNews 2008). Government rejected the term“Freedom of Obtaining Public Information Law” as proposed by the parliament,
because the word “freedom” had a liberal nuance. Government suggested using
the name: “Citizen Rights to Obtain Information Law” which also rejected by
the parliament, because it sounded to regulate citizen rather than a publicagencies. Finally, both sides agree to use the term “disclosure” which isconsidered as neutral term.
In the debate about definition of public agency, again difference occurred
about the status of state owned enterprises. The parliament demanded that itshould be considered as public agency, since it uses public funds and, to someextent, public authority in its operation. But government argued that too muchcontrol of state owned enterprise could reduce its competitiveness. As a

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compromise, state owned enterprise was excluded from the definition of publicagency but specific article dedicated to regulate it.
Indonesian PID Law brings the mission to increase public access to
information produced by government bodies, institution, and agencies in every
administrative level. The aims of the law are stipulated as follows: 1(1) To assure citizen rights to know the plan, the program, and the processof public policy decision making, including its justification.
(2) To promote citizen’s participation in public policy decision making.
(3) To enhance people engagement in public policy making and good publicagencies governance;(4) To adopt good government implementation: transparency, effectiveness,
efficiency, accountability, and responsibility.
(5) To know the reason of public policy that affects to the lives of many
people.
(6) To promote the development of science and educate the nation.
(7) To enhance service and management of public information within publicagencies in order to produce better quality information service.
These objectives imply the commitment to achieve open and responsive
governance through the application of open information at public agencies. The
law also mentions about the category of information which one could choose todisclose or not. There are three kinds of public information which should beconsidered as accessible to public, namely: (1) regular information that should
be provided regularly at least every 6 months, and should be disseminatedusing available user-friendly tools; (2) information that should be announced
immediately, because of its importance to public safety (for instance: information
about the identified upcoming natural disaster, or information about epidemics);
and (3) information that should be ready at any time and should be released to
public by request, including policies and decision making processes. 2
With regard to non-disclosure information, PID Law stated that publicagencies are allowed to reject any request to these five categories of information,
namely: (1) information which could jeopardize national security, including
threat to national sovereignty, unity and safety of the nations; (2) information
to protect business from unfair practices; (3) information related to personal
rights; (4) information related to professional secrecy; (5) information which has
not controlled or documented by public agency. 3

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55

IV. The Implementation of PID Law
In order to measure public perception regarding implementation of PID
Law, the author conducted an online survey involving 61 well-informed selected
respondents, from 17 of 34 Indonesian provinces, including 2 respondents living
abroad. The survey was held on August 5-20, 2014 using a questionnaire asinterview guidance. The respondent backgrounds are university professor,
teacher, and researcher (39%), public servant (23%), business sector andentrepreneur (12%), journalist and NGO activist (10%), university student andprivate company staff (each 7%), and others (3%). They are well educated,
updated to information, and depend on information, especially public
information, in their daily activities (98%). The selection of respondent was
based on their role in society (qualitative approach) rather than as individual
perception (quantitative approach). Because the respondents are well-informed
category of society, they should be seen as opinion leader in certain level.
The interview attempted to map respondents’ opinion about freedom of
information and public information issues, including: current situation of
freedom of information, the implementation of public information disclosure,and information dispute between ICW and police headquarter which the present
author takes as case study in this article. From initial opinion exercise, amajority of the respondent understand about the public information issues eventhough they have not been reached by government campaign regarding the law,
Table 1Comparison to Public Knowledge and Public Information Disclosure (PID) Law,
and Perception about the Intensity of Freedom of Information Campaign (N=61)
Knowledge about the existenceof PID Law

%%

Campaign about PID Law by
Government

Know very much about it

19.7%

4.9% Very high intensity

Know, but not too detail

44.3%

11.5%

Know, but don’t understand

9.8%

57.4% Less intensive, very rare

Not know at all

26.2%

26.2%

Quite intensive, mainstream
media

Never heard of any campaign
about it

Source: Primary data, survey conducted on August 1-20, 2014. (Question No. 13 and 17).

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as indicated in the table table 1.
In general, 73.8% of respondent said that they know (with different level ofknowledge) that PID Law came into force while there are about 26.2% of total
respondents do not have any knowledge about the law. The respondent recognizethat their knowledge about the law came from different sources other thangovernment efforts (through public campaign), as the above data figured outthat 57.4% of respondent assumed that public campaign had been very rare and26.2% of respondent said they had never heard about it.
In fact, the budget allocation to support Information Commission operationin general, particularly to support public awareness, is very limited. In 2013,
total budget allocated for “educating public and rising awareness to public
information issues” has been IDR 1,783,065,000 (approximately US$ 187,000),
and decreased to IDR 1,376,200,000 (approximately US$ 145,000) in 2014, tocover many activities including public dialogue, mass media advertising, media
gathering, publication of newsletter, printing and publication of handbooks andpocket manual, and many more. 4
The impact is, even though a majority of respondents know about the law
but their knowledge about keys aspect of the law related to support access topublic information, relatively lower. The table below indicates such a situation.
The public is expected to be aware of all three variables mentioned above(the PPID, the Information Commission, and information dispute procedures),
Table 2The knowledge of PID Law and mechanisms followed as consequencesof the law (N=61)
The Existence of
PPID*)

Function ofInformation
Commission

Procedure of
information
disputeKnow very much

13.1%

6.6%

8.2%

Know, but not detail22.95%

31.1%

19.7%

Less knowledge

22.95%

21.3%

21.3%

Not know at all

41.0%

41.0%

50.8%

Respondent
OpinionSource: Primary data, survey conducted on August 1-20, 2014. (Question No. 14, 15 and 16).
*)
PPID = PejabatPengelolaInformasidanDokumentasi (Information and Documentation
Management Officer)

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure and Democratization57

because of its importance to encourage citizen access. The formal procedure toobtain public information is by sending a request to a particular PPID whichshould exist in every public agency. The PPID must respond to the request,
either granted or rejected, not exceeding 10 days. If the request is rejected, therequestor can submit a “letter of objection” with additional explanation to thehead of public agency, and should be responded within no more than 30 days
after the letter is received. If the head of public agency still decides that suchinformation is not available for disclosure, within 14 days the requestor can filea lawsuit to Information Commission as “information dispute case”. 5
Upon receiving information dispute case, within 14 days Information
Commission must finalize the initial analysis to the legal standing of the case,and decide whether the case is appropriate to judge or not. When the Information
Commission concluded that the case is available, the process should be started
in no more than 21 days. There are two steps of finding the solution, namely:
the mediation process and the adjudication hearing. The mediation should be
finalized in no more than 14 days, and the adjudication hearing must be
finalized after 40 days. 6
In total, it may take 153 working days (about 7.5 months) for maximum
overall procedure to request public information, including the deliberation of
information dispute in the Information Commission. If information dispute
through general court is included, the process might take 1 year. That is why
some public agencies tend to “buy time” during the process, impacted to theincreasing of the number of information dispute cases handled by Information
Commission. The entry point of this overall procedure is the existence of PPID
in every public agency because this is where the process of requesting public
information should be started.
Unfortunately, data showed that public agencies compliance to establish
PPID, especially in local government, was relatively low. As figured in the tablebelow, up to May 2014 there were 330 PPID out of 694 public agencies or only
47.55% of total public agency has been appointed to PPID.
There are three factors to explain the low compliance of local government
in implementing the PPID. First, it is caused by decentralization policy. Since
the policy was adopted in 1999, local government had been very independent tonational government. National ministry had very loose relations with local
government, except for Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Finance.

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Table 3
Recapitulation of Information and Documentation Management Officer(PejabatPengelolaInformasidanDokumentasi or PPID) in the Government Bodies
No.

Agencies

AmountHave appointed
PPID

%

1.

Ministry

34

34

100%

2.

State Agency / Ministry
Level Agency / LNS / LPP *)

129

41

31.78%

3.

Provincial Government

34

29

85.29%

4.

Municipalities

399

167

41.85%

5.

Cities985960.20%

Total

694

330

47.55%

Source: Directorate of Public Communication, Ministry of Communication andInformation Republic of Indonesia, May 26, 2014
Note: *) LNS = Lembaga Non Struktural (Non-Structural Agencies);
LPP = LembagaPenyiaranPublik (Public Broadcasting Agency)

Secondly, the PPID is non-echelon position, which means has no impact topersonnel bureaucracy career. Government staffs consider position as PPID
more like soft “punishment” rather than sidestep to promotion. Thirdly,
establishment of PPID mostly depends on the political attitude of incumbent
head of municipalities (Bupati) or Mayor. While the head of local government iscurrently chosen through direct election, the importance of political approach
either through civil society and media or politicians who are sitting in local
parliament become necessary to encourage the establishment of PPID.
National public agencies, particularly ministries, comply with public
information disclosure policy adaptively. Besides, following the requirement toestablish the PPID, they are also more responsive to answer public request, as
can be seen in the data from 7 ministries below.
The author requested data using the mechanism of public information
disclosure. Although all 34 national ministries have established specific units
for handling public request to designated information, only 7 ministries
responded to the author’s request through online procedure. Actually, all 34
ministries declare the mechanism to request data clearly through their websites,
but they still need the presence of requestor in their office. They can send the

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Table 4
Ministries’ Response to Public Information Request in 2011-2013
2011
Ministry

2012

Total
Granted*) Rejected
Request2013

Average Total
Granted*) Rejected(days) Request

Finance

71

60

11

11

200

184

Industry

157

152

5

8 5451 5450

Agriculture

46

43

3

14.4

194

Public Works

50

41

1

7.8

Education andCulture162

149

Social Affairs-a)Information andCommunication

723

Average Total
Granted*) Rejected(days) Request

16 2.74

52

Average(days)

30

21

5.3

1 3.425 1904 1904

0

2.1

191

3 2.55

177

146

31

-a)

137

133

4 4.6

189

134

45

3.5

13 1.25 c)

346

335

11 2.3 b)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

-a)

68

48

20

5.8

713

10

-d)

511

502

9

-d)

345

329

16

-d)

Source: Data compilation from individual ministries, 2014.
*)
Including partially granteda)b)
No data
Actually 55 hours and 8 minutesc)Actually 30 hours and 31 minutes d) Data provided in total hours, need to recalculate

data through mail or e-mail, but the request should be applied by paper.
Considering that offices of all national ministries are situated in the capital cityof Jakarta, and many people reside in remote area (for example, it takes about
5 hours by plane to reach Jakarta from Papua) this policy should be considered
to be enhanced.
The time to process the public request and the number of granted request
indicate the commitment of public agencies to be more transparent andresponsive. Over the course of time, many ministries improved their information
openness policy. For example, in 2011 Ministry of Public Works need about 7.8
days in average to process the information request, but in 2012 it improves to
4.5 days, and become 3.5 days in 2013. In the case of information request, someministries show significant increase in 2012 (one year after the PID Laws wasenacted), which indicates that public concern to this new policy has increased
significantly.
Despite the local government reluctance, public opinion looks more
optimistic that there has been a positive impact of the PID Law. Public agency
starts to become more open and transparent by adjusting their information

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handling mechanism to be more accessible. And yet, only 6.6% of respondents
agree that PID Law has very significant impact to the running of public agencies.
It indicates that the adoption of the law should be followed by high commitment
and consistency among public agency staffs.
Table 5
Public Perception on the Impact of PID Law to the Public Agencies Openness(N=61)
Perception on the Impact of PID Law to Openness

Percentage

Very significant impact, public agencies become more open,transparent, and accountable

6.6%

Has impact, public agencies start to adjust with the PID Law
requirement

39.3%

Less impact, some public agencies (particularly local government
level) is reluctant to open the information

32.8%

Almost no impact, public agencies still restrict to open
information

16.4%

No opinion

4.9%

Source: Primary data, survey conducted on August 1-19, 2014. (Question No. 18).

The successfulness of PID law implementation requires the existence of
proactive citizens to claim their rights to know, and at the strong political willof public agency to fulfill people's right. Due to the increase of information flows
promoted by the increasing use of telecommunication equipment such as
cellphone and internet, Indonesian people become easy to access information.
As a consequence, they become more aware of ways to claim their rights. But on
the other side, some government agencies, particularly government officers stilllack political will to act transparently. The next part of this article attempts todescribe an information dispute between a well-known Indonesian NGO named
Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) versus Police headquarters (hereinafterreferred to as ICW and Police HQ) which lead to a deadlock situation.

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V. Case Study: Information Disputes between Indonesian NGO andNational Police Headquarters
Indonesia adopted a new Anti-Money Laundering Law in 2002. One of its
follow up was the establishment of an independent agency called IndonesianFinancial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center or INTRAC (Indonesian:
PPATK or Pusat Pelaporan dan Analisis Transaksi Keuangan). The main dutyof INTRAC is to monitor the inter-banking financial flows in order to detect theutilization of banking system for money laundering. INTRAC sends reportanalysis to the law enforcement agencies only, with “secret” status.
In July 2005, there was rumor that INTRAC detected 15 police officers
holding suspicious bank account with financial activities beyond their financial
profiling. It was most probably that the owners were involved in illicit
transaction (Indonesian Corruption Watch 2005). The rumors triggered publicdebate about the clash of interest and the capability of Police HQ to maintainindependencies when its high rank officers were accused of crime. Because thestatus of the report was “classified”, no public access available to know thetruth. In late June 2010, TEMPO News Magazine courageously published a
special edition heading: “Overweight Piggybank Account of Police Officer”.
Quoting anonymous sources, the magazine mentioned that 23 police officers
holding the suspicious bank account. The source also confirmed that INTRAC
had detected it since 2005 and had sent the report to police headquarter but nofurther follow up (Tempo Online 2010). 7
Tempo exposed 6 of them, just to show the huge amount their financialtransaction, as describe in the table below.
All copies of this TEMPO edition “disappeared” from vendors and newsstands
in the day of issuance. Many media reported that several people (some of themwearing police uniform) had waiting in front of kiosk and newsstand in the earlymorning and bought all copies before they were sold to public (Detik News 2010).
Although the official statement of Police HQ in the afternoon had denied
instructing such activities (Republika 2010), public started to point out that
Police HQ tried to prevent public access to this critical information. In thefollowing day, instead of responding to the public question regarding the issue,
police headquarters threatened to sue TEMPO (The Jakarta Post 2010).

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Table 6Six police officers who were suspectedto be involved in unusual financialtransactions
Name and Position

AccusedComment

MathiusSalempang(rank: Inspector
General)Head of East
Kalimantan Provincial
PoliceOwned bank account amounted
to IDR 2,088,000,000 (about US$
220,000), but unclear source ofmoney. On July 29, 2005, theaccount was closed. He moved
the money to another bankaccount with no clear identity ofthe owner. Two days later, themoney was moved to his personalbank Time Deposit.

“I just know it fromyou”, Gen. Salempang
told reporter on June 24,
2010.

Sylvanus YulianWenas(rank: Inspector
General)Head of Police Mobile
Brigade (an elite unit)

On July 25, 2005 and August 9,
2005, the money amounted of
IDR 10,007,939,259 (about US$
1,050,000) detected had beentransferred from his personalbank account to someone who
claimed to be the executive
director of a private company.

“The money does notbelong to me”, Gen.
Wenas on June 24, 2010.

Budi Gunawan (rank:
Inspector General)
Head of Internal Affairs
Unit

His financial activities detected
had been beyond his salary
profile. Together with his son,they opened bank accounts,
put IDR 29 billion (about US$
3 millions) and IDR 25 billion(about US$ 2.6 million) in.

“The news is absolutely
not true”, Gen. Gunawan
on June 25, 2010.

Badrodin Haiti (rank:
Inspector General)
Head of Police Divisionto Laws Fostering

An unidentified third party
bought a life insurance forhim, amounted to IDR 1.1
billion (about US$ 115,000). He
withdrew IDR 700 million (about
US$ 74,000). There was also
incoming transfer to his accountevery month regularly fromunidentified source.

“That is the authorityof director of criminal
investigation to explain”,
Gen. Haiti on June 24,
2010.

SusnoDuadji (rank:
Commissioner General)
Former Head of
Criminal Investigation
Division

Received money transferred to his “We haven’t talked
bank account from an advocate
about that suspicious
and also from a businessman.
transaction”, Gen.
Total amount was IDR 3.97
Duadji lawyer said on
billion (about US$ 418,000).
June 24, 2010

BambangSuparno (rank: During January 2006 to August
Inspector General)
2007, he received money
Instructor at the Police
transferred to his bank accountHigh Officers Training
amounted to IDR 11.4 billion
Center(about US$ 1.2 million). He
withdrew IDR 3 billion (about
US$ 315,000) in November 2006.

“No problem with thosetransactions. It was
occurred on my Aceh
tour of duty”, Gen.
Suparno said on June24, 2010.

Source: Tempo Online, http://www.tempo.co/read/news/2010/06/29/063259301/InilahPolisi-yang-Disebut-Memiliki-Rekening-Gendut (accessed on July 25, 2014)

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure and Democratization

63

Police inspector general is the third highest ranking officer in the police
agency, marked with 2 stars (of maximum 4 stars). As a comparison, in 2013
the highest base salary for police inspector general was IDR 4,725,000 (about
US$ 500) per month. If the officers held additional position (for example
commanding a unit or leading a task force) the monthly salary could reachabout IDR 15 to IDR 20 million (about US$ 1,600 to US$ 2,100).
Request for Information and Disputes
Public voices demanding Police HQ to explain the issue were rising up.
However, Police HQ alleged that TEMPO had violated the Press Laws andsecrecy of information principles which is also protected by the laws. The
Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said that by accusing TEMPO with thoselaws means that Police HQ admitted the truth of the information reported.
Otherwise, ICW argued, if the information was wrong, police should have used
defamation crime to TEMPO. By that interpretation, ICW concluded that
TEMPO had reported a true story. ICW filed corruption case to Indonesian
Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the police officers as mentioned by
TEMPO for money laundering, misused of authority, and corruption (Info
Korupsi 2010).
Police HQ admitted that INTRAC reports was existing, but it could not be
opened to public due to classified status. In order to satisfy public demand,
Police HQ decided to investigate 23 officers as mentioned in the report. On July23, 2010, police declared that (Hukum Online 2013):• 17 bank accounts were clean (no indication of crime).
• 2 bank accounts were suspected possible misuse for money launderingand the appeals were sent to criminal investigation.
• 2 others accounts were waiting for further clearance.
• 1 account temporarily unable to examine, the owner was running for local
election.
• 1 other account decided unable to clarify, the owner had passed away.
This announcement was questionable because of no clear information
regarding the owner of the account, and public had no access to find out how theinvestigation was conducted. It was difficult to accept that Police HQ will
seriously investigate their high ranking officers, especially when those officers
hold influential position in the agency. On August 2, 2010 ICW requested Police

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HQ to reveal the identity of the 17 officers who had been clarified as “clean”.
The PPID of Police HQ replied to ICW on August 4, 2010 that they were notallowed by the law to open the information. ICW sent the second request directly
to Head of National Police Agency with additional argumentation. Unfortunately,
there was no response until 2 months passed.
ICW had followed the mechanism to obtain information. First, they sent
request. When the agency rejected to grant it, then ICW sent the second request
with additional explanation. After waiting for several days without proper
response, on October 21, 2010 ICW filed an information dispute lawsuit toCentral Information Commission. The adjudication hearing in the commission
started on December 1, 2010 (Viva News Online 2010).
Both ICW and Police HQ tested argumentations to support their standpoint.
Police HQ based their refusal to disclose the information on the “principles of
exemption” as stated in PID Laws. Article 17 point h number (3) of Chapter V
stated that public information should be exempted to disclose if it contains
personal secret, including: personal financial statement, asset, income, and bankaccount. Police also used Article 6 verse (3) point c, which stated: “public agency
could not release the public information if the information is related to personal
rights” 8. Also, another article of Anti-Money Laundering Law stated that public
officer including INTRAC staffs, investigators, public attorney, judges, or every
party who hold the documents related to anti-money laundering laws are
obliged to keep the content of the documents confidentiality, except for law
enforcement process. 9
On the contrary, ICW argued that both of those articles of PID Laws could
not be applied if the person holds position as public officer. Article 18 verses (2)of PID Laws stated that this exemption might be dismissed if: “…the disclosure
is related to personal position in public offices”. 10 Adrianus Meliala (a wellknown crime scientist in Indonesia) who invited to be heard as expert, agreed
to this opinion. 11 Regarding to classified status of INTRAC report, ICW argued
that Police HQ had held the investigation and had announced the 17’s accountas “clean”. It meant releasing the information would not endanger any
investigations, because the investigation was over.
After deliberating rules and expert opinions, on February 8, 2011
Information Commission gave a verdict as follows: 12(1) Admit ICW’s entire request to this case.

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure and Democratization

65(2) Information regarding details of bank account owned by 17 police
officers who had been stated as “clean” by the police headquarter on
July 23, 2010 was open and non-restricted.
(3) Calls off the decision of police headquarter that rejected the request of
ICW (on August 4, 2010).
(4) Instructing police headquarter to release the information to ICW by no
more than 17 working days after the verdict.
The Information Commission’s verdict considered as a big move in thepolitics of public information disclosure in Indonesia. Before, some individual
who held position in public agency could defend their secrecy using the“exemption principle” in the PID Laws. This case has shown that for someextent, there was a possibility to implement the principle called: “exemption
over exemption”.
Lack of Political Will
Unfortunately, Police HQ did not agree with the verdict. On March 1, 2011,
police appealed to The State Administrative Court. But during the hearing
process, complex issues related to the authority of The Court to judge the casearose. PID Laws stated that if the disputing parties do not agree with Information
Commission verdict, they can appeal to Administrative Court. On the other
hand, the laws about Administrative Court stated that its authority is limited
to judge the dispute between individual versus state or public institutions. In
this case, one public institution (police headquarter) challenged another public
institution (Information Commission) decision, which was beyond The Court’s
authority.
After several hearing, Police HQ unilaterally argued that Administrative
Court did not have enough legal authority to judge the dispute. Hence, on June
7, 2010, Police HQ decided to withdraw from the hearing, and cancel the appeal.
But at the same time, they still had no intention to release the information to
ICW. Police HQ kept on standing opinion that if the information requested was
released, Police HQ had violated the law regarding the protection of individual
rights.
Implication of the Case
This case showed that there are at least three critical issues in order to66

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implement the public information disclosure in Indonesia. First, full discretionof public information holder still plays important role in disclosing theinformation. There is no mechanism to force any public agencies to open theirinformation even though the legal decision has decided so. Second, the conflicts
among regulations require interpretation, which is sometimes confusing. Fromlegal perspective, information issues might be related to many areas, some ofthem are Criminal Code, Banking Law, and Intelligence Law. Thirdly,
Information Commission has the authority to make a decision but without
executive power to force it.
In practice, there are three possible types of public agency obedience to theverdict of Information Commission, namely: (1) obey the verdict; (2) contest theverdict by appealing to State Administrative Court; and (3) disobey the verdict.
Most of the conflicting parties obeyed the verdict, but some public agencies had
tried to challenge the verdict. 13 Police HQ refusal is the only case noted so far.
The Police HQ refusal to open the information requested by ICW backed bya court decision had brought negative impact on the politics of information
freedom in Indonesia, and also has tend to diminish public trust to police
agency. On one hand, other public agencies could also sometimes decided tokeep their critical information undisclosed, simply just overruled the Information
Commission decision or even court decision. On the other hand, this refusal also
tends to worsen public image about Police HQ which is assumed to coversomething wrong in their office. For the last few years, Indonesian AntiCorruption Commission assessed police agency as one of top state agency withvery low integrity (Kompas 2009).

VI. Analysis: Disclosing Information, Consolidating Democracy
It has been very common in many transitional countries that bureaucracy
sometimes become an obstacle in the transition process. It is because they had
been enjoying many preferences during the authoritarian regimes, and theywanted to protect these privileges. That could be one argument to explain why
the drafting of PID Law in 2001 was started by parliament initiatives, notthrough executive drafting. 14 The 1999 general election resulted in theemergence of new and fresh politicians with idealistic views on democracy. In
the 1999-2004, House of Representatives enacted a series of progressive laws.

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure and Democratization

67

It includes: Law Number 26/2000 about Human Rights Court, Law Number
15/2002 about Prevention of Money Laundering Crime, Law Number 30/2002
about Establishment of Anti-Corruption Commission, and Law Number 24/2003
about Constitutional Court, just to mention some of them. 15
After the PID Law entered into force in 2010, the politics and governancelandscape had changed ever since. In the beginning, many public agencies
found it difficult to comply with the law. Most of public agency rejected public
request to disclose “critical” information, such as financial report, budget plan,tender, or annual planning documents. Public started to utilize the legal
procedure. After Information Commission instructed to grant most of the public
request, then public agencies started to adjust to new culture of freedom of
information.
According to Central Information Commission data, in 2010 they had filed
76 information dispute cases. In 2011, the numbers of dispute had been
increasing significantly to 419 cases, increased by 450% (Central Information
Commission 2014). Such trend implied that more people recognize the newprocedure, while at the same time most of public agencies were still restrictive.
Subsequently, in the following years the number of cases slightly reduced to
323 cases (in 2012) and 365 cases (in 2013). It may be argued that consistency
to fulfill public request to particular public information has impacted on the
installation of new culture of openness, transparency, and accountability inmany level of public agencies. State apparatus as well as public bureaucrats
become more familiar with delivering information, uplift secrecy, and reduced
monopoly over public information.
The critical challenge in this implementation of freedom of information,
particularly to public information openness, is the political will of particularpublic agency. In many public agencies, there are sometimes “politics in works”
operate. The problem will become more serious when it occurred in “strong
agencies”, such as police agency as explained in the case study. The absence ofinstitutional framework to control any agencies could jeopardize the wholebuilding of democratic consolidation.
As a result, the construction of democratization building in Indonesia is
still questionable for the long term. Although many formal procedures havebeen established to secure the work of democracy, without opening the window
for public to involve will reduce public trust. In the case mentioned above, public

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expected that those officers should be in question for their future career. On thecontrary, many of them enjoy bright career promotion within police agency tourof duty. For instance, General Badrodin Haiti, who had been suspected in
TEMPO report before, was promoted as Vice Chairman of National Police
Agency on February 2014 (Tempo Online 2014). This is the second highest
position in the whole Indonesian Police structure.

VII. Conclusion
Indonesian effort to adopt wider access to freedom of information has
passed through a long and winding road. Following the transition from
authoritarian regime to democracy in 1998, the freedom of information approachstarted by enabling the political environment by adopting the new law directly
related to public information disclosure. The serpentine debate during thelegislation process had taken about 8 year, noted as the longest process inIndonesian law making deliberation until 2010 when the law finally enacted.
As basic foundation to create a more adaptive social and politicalenvironment to promote freedom of information, the enactment of the law
requires enforcement as important next stages. In Indonesia process of
democracy consolidation faces more complex situation to enforce the PID law,ranging from the dissemination to the reluctance of particular agency to obey.
There is a specific institution to empower the implementation of the law, namely
Information Commission. Unfortunately, this commission provided with muchauthority lacks executive power to enforce its decision. The analysis in thisarticle shows that public agencies are suggested to obey the mechanism todisclose any public information under their control, but there has been no clear
mechanism to enforce them to obey it. This situation tends to weaken the
consolidation process of democracy. People may lose their trust in the ability of
government in taking appropriate action to coordinate different agencies.

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure and Democratization

69

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End Notes:
1 See Indonesian Public Information Disclosure Law can be downloaded from website of Office ofCabinet Secretariat: http://sipuu.setkab.go.id/buka_puu.php?id_puu=16132&file=UU%2014%20
Tahun%202008.pdf. Article 3 describe about the mission statement of the law.
2 See Chapter IV of Indonesian Public Information Disclosure Law.
3 See Article 6 of Indonesian Public Information Disclosure Law.
4 See the Annual Report, Annual Budget Plan, Annual Plan and Program of Central Information
Commission, can be accessed through: http://www.komisiinformasi.go.id/category/view/laporan
5 See Central Information Commission Regulation Number 1, year 2010 regarding to: Standard ofProcedure (SOP) of Public Information, http://www.komisiinformasi.go.id/regulasi/view/peraturankomisi-informasi-no-1-tahun-2010
6 See Central Information Commission Regulation Number 2, year 2010 regarding to: Procedureof Information Dispute Case, http://www.komisiinformasi.go.id/regulasi/view/peraturan-komisiinformasi-nomor-2-tahun-2010
7 In 2012, INTRAC explained that they regularly submitted report to police about many suspicioustransactions, including those involving high officers in police agency. During 2003 until 2011,
there were about 1.800 suspicious accounts. In 2012, it reached 83,435 accounts. See http://www.
rmol.co/read/2012/01/17/52196/Polri-Tetap-Ogah-Ungkapkan-Rekening-Gendut-Jenderal8 See Indonesian Public Information Disclosure law, op. cit.
9 See Indonesian Anti-Money Laundering Act, Law Number 15 year 2002 (had been amended
with Laws Number 25 year 2003), Article 10A. The document can be downloaded from official
website of Indonesian Cabinet Secretariat: http://sipuu.setkab.go.id/buka_puu.php?id_
puu=7313&file=UU0252003.pdf
10 See, Indonesian Public Information Disclosure Law, op. cit.
11 For the explanation of AdrianusMeliala, see the verdict Number 002/X/KIP-PS-A/2010 on thecase of Police Headquarter versus Indonesian Corruption Watch; the document can be downloaded
from Central Information Commission Official Website at: http://www.komisiinformasi.go.id/
daftarputusan/download/file/Putusan_ICW-Polri1.pdf
12 See, Ibid.
13 The Indonesian Supreme Court had issued decree Number 2 year 2011 granted authority to theadministrative court to handle dispute.
14 In Indonesian legislation system, there are two sources of drafting the bill to become law. First,
the executive drafting (in which related the government agency prepare the proposal to theparliament), and second one is the parliament initiatives (in which the house of representative
prepare the proposal by particular mechanism).
15 Complete collection of official copy of Indonesians laws and regulations can be accessed throughMinistry of Laws, Regulations, and Human Rights at: http://ditjenpp.kemenkumham.go.id/kerja/
lntabel.php

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Abstract

The Nexus between Public Information Disclosure
and Democratization:
The Case of Indonesia
Ishaq RAHMAN

Indonesia has adopted the Public Information Disclosure (PID) Law in2008, which intends to promote higher public access to any information producedby public agency. This article attempts to explore the current status of its
implementation, challenges, and how much it has contributed to the developmentof democracy consolidation. The author conducted qualitative descriptive
analysis to several data, including secondary data, case study, and public
opinion survey targeted to well-informed respondents. PID Law has faced many
obstacles since its inception during legislation process to its implementation.
Government agencies as well state apparatus need to shift their mindset from
culture of secrecy to the new norm of openness. On one hand, public demand to
adopt more transparency and accountability in governance has risen up. But on
the other hand, some public agencies officers attempted to cover criticalinformation that is considered to endanger the institutions.
Keywords:
public information disclosure, democratization, freedom of information