Whistle-blowers cheer up:
someone’s listening
Indonesia needs to thank a long-gone guru for not expelling a
cheeky student: The teacher’s reluctance to punish means the Republic has an
Ombudsman who understands grievance first hand – and the importance of exposing
wrongs.
Back in the authoritative
1980s school kids knew their place; they muttered privately about their elders’
failings but few dared to comment openly.
Though not Amzulian Rifai,
then at the Lubuk Linggau State
High School in South
Sumatra.
The teenager liked to write
and originally wanted to become a journalist.
More important is that he had a strong sense of justice which he
ventilated in a student union newsletter.
“I criticized a teacher who’d
come to the class, pass around books, tell us to read and then go out to drink
coffee,” Rifai said.
“That could have got me into
real trouble, but I was defended by others and survived – perhaps because I had
an outstanding student award. But I had
no idea of becoming an advocate for people’s rights to better service.
“Even later, when studying
law in Australia
and where I first encountered the Ombudsman during fieldwork, I had no ambition
of starting a similar service in my homeland.”
So did he criticize his
tutors at Melbourne and Monash Universities? “No, everything was good. In any case I was too busy. My scholarship wasn’t enough – I had to wash
dishes and deliver newspapers to survive.”
Rifai earned a doctorate and
returned home to eventually become the Professor of Constitutional Law at Sriwijaya University, a private lawyer and a
business director. He also continued to
write - 800 essays published so far.
All these profitable
positions had to be jettisoned in 2016 when he shifted to Jakarta
as head of Indonesia’s
dispute resolution service. This now has
a shiny central city office with walk-in facilities for the dissatisfied, and
branches in 34 provinces.
It employs 600 staff and
eight specialist ombudsmen to handle different parts of the nation’s vast bureaucracy.
The word comes from the Old
Norse meaning ‘representative’ and is still not properly understood. Vice President Jusuf Kalla asked Rifai to
find a better word in Indonesian but it has defied easy translation – as in other
countries.
The idea of having an
independent office where aggrieved citizens could complain about the public
service and maybe get some resolution is popularly believed to be a Swedish
idea from the early 19th century, though a similar system may have
existed in China and Korea more than
2,000 years ago.
It started in Indonesia where
the public advocate’s office was first opened in 2008, eight years after the
first decree signed by the late President Abdurrahman Wahid and more than 30
years after its first introduction in Australia.
It has also spread to big
companies which employ their own ombudsmen to handle product or service
grievances.
The Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication
Commission) gets headlines most weeks by making high profile arrests of the amoral
allegedly slipping fat envelopes to win contracts and favors.
Polls
show the KPK, born 2003, is the nation’s most trusted agency and has so far not
lost any conviction it initiated.
However
the Ombudsman has no powers to catch or charge wrongdoers leading to claims
it’s just a docile doggie, chained alongside its kennel. The best it can do is
to recommend that government departments polish their performances.
Rifai
would not rank the agencies which listen best and take on suggestions for
betterment, but did say: “The police are one of the most responsive.”
Have
there been satisfaction surveys of clients?
“Not yet.”
“Chasing
criminals is not our job,” he added.
“We’re a dispute resolution service.
Our task is to listen to complaints and work through mediation.”
A
quick and casual check of everyday Indonesians drew puzzlement when asked about
the Ombudsman, but our totally unscientific survey is backed by
statistics.
The
Ombudsman’s office drew around 10,000 complaints last year, a jump from 6,000
two years earlier. As the public becomes
more familiar with their rights, so the workload increases. A further 75 staff are expected to be
recruited next year.
However
the numbers fall far short of the 41,300 ‘approaches’ made last year to the Ombudsman
in Australia, a nation with less than one tenth of the population of Indonesia.
There
could be other explanations – Australia fosters a culture of whingeing
(complaining, or what the British call ‘grousing’) while Indonesians are more
accepting of errors made by civil servants; but the more likely reason is that
the Ombudsman Down Under is well known and receptive.
When
consumers win their stories often get media coverage.
Rifai
says his officers don’t just wait for the angry and annoyed, but send out
mobile units to smaller towns where they run clinics.
Most
complainants are concerned about regional governments handling land ownership
certificates and building permits. The
other areas are education, particularly school fees levied when public school
education is supposed to be free, and health care in hospitals.
Here
the Ombudsman has a ‘quick response unit’ to handle worries where a patient or
relatives alleges that treatment or non-treatment might threaten a life, but
non-urgent complaints seem to take forever.
Rifai
defended the system arguing that it needs to be fair to both sides. When a protest is lodged the office which is
alleged not to be following the rules has to be given time to respond.
Inevitably
the process is long and tedious which means some complainants give up in
frustration.
Eventually
both sides may end up confronting each other with an Ombudsman officer trying
to fix the issue and mediate.
As
in ‘he said, she said’ marital rows, reconciliation is not always possible, particularly
when one side is unsure of dates and times, or hasn’t kept the necessary
paperwork.
“There’s
a culture of bureaucracy in this country but it’s changing,” said Rifai. “There
has been a distrust of public institution and this must improve. Honesty and trust in government and the way
it deals with citizens is essential for democracy.
“Corruption
isn’t just a crime, it’s morally wrong.
All the mainstream religions condemn greed, and our culture doesn’t
teach us to be greedy.
“Change
won’t happen overnight, but having good and honest family values is very
important in ensuring we all do the right thing by our fellow citizens and
society.”
First published in Indonesian Expat, 23 May, 2019:
https://indonesiaexpat.biz/featured/mad-as-hell-someones-listening/
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