Description: The Indonesian Finance Ministry has reportedly approved an allowance hike for lawmakers in the country, increasing the previous monthly allowance from $24 thousand to $42 thousand, citing increases in staple food prices and transportation costs. The proposal was approved by the country’s Secretariat and was introduced in early Oct, sparking renewed concerns of civil unrest. Protests in Indonesia ignited due to the allowances of the lawmakers and spiraled into the country’s largest civil unrests in modern history. Several participants in the protests have criticized the new decision by the government claiming that demonstrators have been tricked into believing the government’s reformation plans, especially regarding the allowance packages for lawmakers. Indonesia’s Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, claimed that a program providing full public transparency was put in place in order to protect public interest and support the initiative of increasing allowances for lawmakers.
Impact: The Indonesian government is regressing towards the core reason of the massive civil unrests from Aug and risking renewed instability through the initiative to increase the allowances for lawmakers. The government’s position for the increase arrives in a period of time when public trust and credibility in the government has been lost and the Indonesian political establishment had previously promised severe economic reforms in order to appease the protesters. Depending on the level of the transparency program, the potential for Indonesia to scale back into instability is currently high. The government needs to provide the civil population with detailed accounts and accurate projections to support the increases and ensure the process is based on informative and sustained data in order to avoid renewed instability.