International Journal of Law

Authors
Daud Djubedi, Wulanmas APG Frederik, J Ronald Mawuntu, Ronny A Maramis

Abstract
Since the reformation was proclaimed in 1998, the echo of democratization has started to be the conversation topic of public discussion in this country. The enthusiasm for being released from the authorization fetter that had been a main symbol of the previous regime rolled, formed a snowball (snow balling effect) and then led its way to the demand of reformation by defeating the new regime along with its centralistic reigning system.The agrarian affairs in Indonesia which is basically should be managed by local government, is still being managed by central government until today. In fact, several acts related to local government state that agrarian affairs should be managed by local government. By giving irrational reasons such as “if the agrarian affairs are managed by local government, Indonesians would be fragmented or local government does not have enough capable human resources who have proper knowledge to manage the agrarian affairs, and other irrational reasons”, central government seems to make irrelevant excuses. In contrast, some studies showed that the majority of the citizens prefer the agrarian affairs to be managed directly by their own local government. The citizens claim that the local government has capability to manage it and the local government could provide some policy innovations related to the agrarian affairs to simplify the access and reduce the unnecessary expenses of the land certificate due to the minimum service fee and other innovations that could facilitate the agrarian service in the region easily.Besides, local government might have infrastructure networks and other governmental service facilities from the districts to sub-districts because local government has region and community while The National Land Agency does not have these. That is why when agrarian conflict appears, it is rare for the community to complain to agrarian office, but the community tends to complain to local government. For addition, there are many negative implications in local areas as long as the agrarian affairs are still being managed by central government. For instance, the service area would be too wide while having limited agrarian affairs offices and human resources. This basically leads to improper and non maximal service for the public.By aiming to have effective application model of agrarian affairs that can be applied in the local regions, the central government still has authority to control the general policy, norms determination, standards, procedures, and criteria, but operational technical service such as land registration, and publication of the land certificate should be performed by local government.