Sabby Kosay | Papuan student living in Yogyakarta
First, the relationship between the central and local governments. The Papua Special Autonomy Law needs to give greater authority to districts/cities in Papua and West Papua to be involved in the aspects of planning, implementation, and evaluation of regional development through the allocation of special autonomy funds. The central government also needs to make derivative regulations for the Special Autonomy Law to be more operational concerning the governance of the special autonomy fund.
Second, the transformation of the political affirmation policy so that it is not only based on ethnicity, which has been known as the concept of affirmation for indigenous Papuans (OAP), has become an affirmation of the interests of the Papuan people. Ethnicity as the basis of affirmation must be transformed into a broader affirmation concept, especially those concerning the interests of the basic rights of the multicultural Papuan people to access health, education, and welfare.
The revision of the Special Autonomy for Papua Volume II is indeed necessary for the easternmost region of Indonesia because development in Papua is necessary for the sake of equitable development so that Papua has a competitive edge with other regions.
Third, there needs to be a regional financial management system that is more accountable and transparent following the principles of good governance in the governance of the special autonomy fund. This needs to learn from the experience of participatory, transparent, and accountable village fund governance. So far, Papua’s special autonomy funds have often been the “bancakan” of the local Papuan elites and have not flowed into a priority development allocation for the Papuan people. Therefore, weaknesses in regional financial governance stemming from the Papua Special Autonomy need to be adopted in the revision of the Papua Special Autonomy Volume II.
Fourth, revision of the Papua Special Autonomy Region needs to determine priorities and measurable targets as well as time limitations for the implementation of the Special Autonomy Region. This is important as a common ground to measure the extent to which the policies implemented are appropriate and achieve targets. Whereas the absence of measurable indicators means that the Papua Special Autonomy allocation does not have targets that can be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively.
