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When a mere mayor can dictate policy in a controversy that continues to damage Indonesia’s image abroad, how much control does the president actually have in this decentralized country?

This would be an irrelevant and even subversive question 15 years ago. Today, however, the question bothers many political observers who wonder why national leadership seems absent in cases where it is most needed.

In 2001, when the Regional Autonomy Law took effect, a different landscape of state management began to evolve. The president of Indonesia was no longer an authoritarian figure whose very cough could silence the archipelago like in the days of the New Order. The law reduced the central government’s authority to several strategic areas: defense and security, religion, foreign affairs, monetary and fiscal policy, and judiciary affairs. Other than those areas, the authority since 2001 has been with provinces and districts.

In essence, the 33 governors represent the president who, sitting in Jakarta, is too far away from the regions.

The governors act on the president’s behalf and also report to him. Strangely, the governors feel their authority is so minimal that they cannot function properly. District heads and mayors — now known as “small kings” — don’t need to listen to the governors.

In theory, the district heads and mayors are subordinated to the governors. But in reality, a district head rarely feels obliged to follow a governor’s orders, because under the direct election system, the voters rather than the governor appoint the district head.

So every district head in the country is accountable first of all to the voters, then to his party and those who funded his election campaign. Only after that will he turn to the governor as the president’s man in the field.

In the past, a district head had to obey his governor or face instant removal. Today, a district head can ignore the orders of his governor if he wishes to, even though such orders come directly from the president.

The latest example of what this can lead to is seen in the dispute over the GKI Yasmin church in Bogor. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono seems powerless to execute a verdict of the Supreme Court to allow the church to open, simply because the mayor of Bogor refuses to respect that verdict.

So when a mayor says “no,” even the president must bow to him, at the same time making the Supreme Court appear foolish because its verdict apparently lacks authority. A mayor can rebel against two top state institutions at the same time — the presidency and the Supreme Court — and still win hands down.

This is a serious issue of state administration: The authority of two state institutions above which there is no other authority but the Constitution can easily be ignored by an official of much lower standing. And nobody knows what to do about it.

When Ryaas Rasyid, the first and last minister of regional autonomy, led a team to draft the Regional Autonomy Law, the original purpose was to devolve the central government’s power to the provinces, not to the districts.

In that way governors would still have authority to control the district heads and mayors, who would be accountable to them. If that had been the case, the governors would fully represent the president, who would be in full control of the country.

There was, however, fear among the political elites at the time that giving full authority to governors could spark federalism and the nation could break apart. The euphoria of reform and democratization that gripped the legislature as a result forced the government to allow regional autonomy to be implemented at the district level.

Today, the situation can no longer be reversed. The small kings have enjoyed the benefit of being kings in their own right and the state has become a laboratory for governmental experimentation.

In the future, we may see more cases in which the president’s authority appears powerless in the face of the small kings who are — rightly — claiming that they must be accountable to the voters in the name of promoting democracy and human rights.

Former Vice President Jusuf Kalla has warned that social disloyalty is on the rise due to a lack of justice and economic equity, in the absence of national leadership and erosion of the rule of law.

According to the chief justice of the Constitutional Court, Mahfud M.D., the media is the only remaining healthy pillar of the nation. “The executive, legislative and judicial branches of government are all rotten,” he said.

Some cynics have even suggested that perhaps Indonesia can do without most of its civil servants. As long as we have the banking sector, the police and the judiciary, that would suffice.

All that the private sector needs to achieve growth is national stability, policy certainty and legal protection, the argument goes.

Is it time for us to review the structure of the central government and downsize it in accordance with the spirit of decentralization?

It is odd indeed that after devolving power all the way to the district level, we kept a massive bureaucracy at the central government level. Such a top-heavy bureaucracy is the most perfect bastion for corruption.

So we need to trim. But we also need to relocate some of the ministries and relevant institutions from Jakarta to the provinces to shorten the span of control and accountability.

On paper, democracy that ushers in a decentralization of power is laudable. In practice, the system creates enormous difficulties for anybody holding Indonesia’s top job.

Pitan Daslani is a political correspondent at BeritaSatu Media Holdings. He can be reached at pitandaslani@gmail.com.