Yogyakarta, October 16th 2021─The Student Corps of Governmental Politics (KOMAP) Fisipol UGM collaborated with Politically Aware Generation to hold a workshop of policy making simulation and career sharing session with reputable public policy experts. There were three mentors in the event which were Yoel Yosaphat as a staff at Bandung’s Regional House of Representative, Rian Ernest as PSI politician, Trias Fetra as the palm oil governance program officer from Yayasan Madani Berkelanjutan, and finally Dr. Nanang Indra Kurniawan as a lecturer in DPP Fisipol UGM. The theme of the workshop was the issue of sustainable palm oil in Indonesia. The event that was attended by 60 participants was moderated by Dedek Prayudi as the Executive Director of the Center for Youth and Population Center. Generally, the discussion was about the challenges and opportunities of sustainable palm oil implementation in Indonesia.
The discussion was started with welcoming remarks from the Dean of Fisipol UGM, the Head of Department of Fisipol UGM DPP Undergraduate Program, as well as the Head of KOMAP Fisipol UGM. In their welcoming remarks, the three speakers said that the event was a good initiative in spearheading online learning during the pandemic. Aside from that, there is also a big shift in the political world where youngsters are starting to fill up public spaces. Therefore, hopefully the discussion can give the participants some knowledge to implement in their day to day life according to their roles.
To start the main event which is the material sharing session, the moderator, Dedek Prayudi, first started off by saying that the issue of palm oil is pretty complex in Indonesia. On the one hand, the palm oil business is quite lucrative for the state’s economy. However, on the other hand there are also environmental repercussions because of palm oil farming. To talk about the topic, the discussion was divided into two sessions which were material sharing sessions followed by a simulation of public policy creation.
The first material was given by Yoel Yosaphat about the issue commonly encountered in policy making. In his talk, Yoel said that the process of policy making is the meeting place between technocratic and political paradigm. Those two paradigms often clash and hence consensus making is quite difficult to do. In line with Yoel, Rian Ernest also believed that the issue between technocracy and politics often clashes. However, policy makers also need to pay attention to how to make good political compromises and how to let go of certain demands. Then, Trias Fetra and Dr Nanang talked more about palm oil. In their sharing session, both speakers agreed that Indonesia’s palm oil sustainability needs to pay attention to the needs of all layers of society. The implementation of the policy also needs to include all parts of the society.