Mandatory budget refocusing amid nationwide disasters

 By Muhamad Isnur

Jakarta  

Chairman of the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) and a lecturer at Jentera Law School 

A persistent series of hydrometeorological crises compounded by El Niño, alongside simultaneous geological disasters over the past two months, has underscored Indonesia’s acute ecological vulnerability and exposed deep fragilities in regional emergency response capacities.

With more than 1,700 disaster events recorded over the last nine months, primarily catastrophic forest and land fires alongside flash floods, these crises can no longer be characterized as isolated or seasonal anomalies. They constitute a systemic national emergency requiring unified institutional resolve and flexible public financing mechanisms.

The geographic footprint of these concurrent disasters is unprecedented. Widespread land and forest fires continue to ravage Kalimantan, Sumatra and critical ecological corridors across Sulawesi and Java. Meanwhile, six active volcanoes have erupted almost simultaneously, most notably Mount Anak Krakatau, prompting high-level alerts across coastal Banten and Lampung while dispersing dense volcanic ash into West Java and Jakarta.

These crises are further aggravated by moderate-to-severe earthquakes in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), destructive floods and landslides across Central Tapanuli, Southwest Aceh, North Sumatra and Sulawesi, as well as prolonged drought conditions that have triggered severe potable water deficits across Java, Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi.

At the apex of these mounting emergencies, local administrations face severely constrained fiscal autonomy. Comprehensive expenditure containment mandates introduced under President Prabowo Subianto have substantially curbed regional transfer funds (TKD), the vital fiscal spine providing 70 to 80 percent of municipal and regency revenue nationwide. Compounding this contraction, central directives mandate local prioritizations for flagship national initiatives, chiefly the free nutritious meal program and the Red and White Cooperatives.

This convergence of diminished central transfers and curtailed discretionary fiscal space has hollowed out local disaster mitigation allocations and exhausted unforeseen expenditure reserves. Consequently, disaster-affected regional governments have been reduced to relying almost exclusively on ready-to-use funds administered centrally by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and the Finance Ministry.

This financial dependency creates an institutional bottleneck, as local authorities must clear multi-tiered administrative hurdles, including formal emergency status declarations and centralized field verifications, before relief tranches are released. These procedural delays inject a catastrophic response lag into ground-level emergency operations.

The tangible cost of this structural paralysis was evidenced in the recent NTT earthquake response, where 94 elderly evacuees died in relief shelters due to strained baseline camp facilities and underfunded municipal logistics.

Constrained fiscal environments have also incentivized administrative distortions on the ground. In haze-blanketed sectors of Kalimantan, local agencies have kept schools open despite hazardous air quality index readings, largely to sustain mandated free meal distribution quotas. In contrast, neighboring states, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and provincial authorities in the southern and central Philippines, swiftly enacted distance-learning protocols as transboundary pollution spiked.

Exacerbating this crisis, the free meals apparatus has encountered critical quality-assurance breakdowns despite its adjusted 2026 allocation of Rp 229.75 trillion (US$13 billion). According to early warning and alert system data from the Health Ministry as of Sept. 11, more than 50,000 cases of foodborne illness linked to the program were reported across 560 incidents spanning 36 provinces and 245 regencies and cities.

When this public health emergency escalated, regional containment stalled amid a clear jurisdictional vacuum. The divergence between Pati regency, which enacted a formal Extraordinary Event (KLB) declaration, and Sidoarjo regency, which limited its response to a localized health crisis team, underscores the absence of a standardized emergency protocol.

Because catering facilities contract directly under the central National Nutrition Agency (BGN), municipal officials lack the legal authority to suspend noncompliant kitchens, inspect food chains independently or halt contaminated distribution corridors in real time.

From a fiscal governance perspective, the program’s daily operating footprint, projected between Rp 400 billion and Rp 850 billion, stands in sharp disproportion to existing civil protection allocations. To place this spending disparity in context, one to two operational days of the free meals program roughly matches the BNPB’s entire annual operational budget of Rp 1.05 trillion.

To underwrite this centralized agenda, the executive branch has reallocated grassroots fiscal assets. Under Finance Minister Regulation No. 7/2026, 58.03 percent (Rp 34.57 trillion) of the Rp 60.57 trillion national Village Fund was repurposed for cooperatives infrastructure and operational supply chains servicing the free meals rollout. Furthermore, policy directives from the Villages and Development of Disadvantaged Regions Ministry sought to redirect up to 30 percent (approximately Rp 20 trillion) of village food-security allocations into Village-Owned Enterprises (BUMDes) to finance free meal raw commodity inputs.

This systematic absorption of local resources initially exploited ambiguous catch-all provisions, such as the phrase “and/or implementing Central Government policies”, within the village incentive framework outlined in Law No. 17/2025 on the 2026 state budget.

This expansion of executive fiscal discretion prompted critical judicial intervention. Acting upon a petition filed by MBG Watch, public interest advocate Busyro Muqoddas, and legal counsel, the Constitutional Court issued a landmark ruling on Sept. 16, reinstating fundamental checks on executive budgetary power.

Regarding Article 8 of the 2026 State Budget Law, the court struck down provisions granting the executive unilateral discretion to alter state spending architectures via presidential regulation (Perpres), affirming that any mid-term structural revisions must secure prior legislative approval from the House of Representatives.

In its review of Article 14, Paragraph (1), the court held that the Rp 1 trillion village incentive allocation must remain ring-fenced exclusively for sustainable, community-driven village development, effectively invalidating mechanisms that subordinated village autonomy to federal flagship financing.

Furthermore, the court restricted executive prerogatives under Article 29, Paragraph (1) by returning emergency economic interventions to the House’s oversight, thereby safeguarding legislative budgetary checks during fiscal reallocations.

These decisions build upon Constitutional Court Ruling No. 40/2026, which prohibits the government from siphoning baseline education funding to subsidize the free meals program, a maneuver improperly attempted through the elucidation section of Article 22, Paragraph (3), in direct contravention of law drafting standards set by Law No. 12/2011 on the formulation of laws and regulations.

The Constitutional Court’s recent interventions deliver an unequivocal mandate: Centralized policy ambitions cannot override the state’s primary obligation to safeguard citizen welfare. Forcible fiscal centralization in pursuit of populist initiatives has compromised local responsiveness across concurrent ecological and public health crises.

Public financial governance must immediately return to its constitutional foundation, where the state’s nonnegotiable duty to protect the whole Indonesian people supersedes political expenditure programs. Emergency fiscal autonomy must be restored to local authorities before impending disaster cycles inflict further preventable loss of life.

Antara/Auliya Rahman

Reduced visibility: An airplane is seen parked on Thursday at haze-covered Tjilik Riwut Airport in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan.

Source Link :
https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2026/09/28/mandatory-budget-refocusing-amid-nationwide-disasters.html