Legal Liability of Public Financial Administration in the Pandemic Era

Abstract

The conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic have prompted some major changes in various sectors, especially in this regard to the dimensions of financial governance. Basically, the state of emergency has several times causing massive factors to change the pattern and manner of government administration such as the threat of economic crises and other emergencies. Emergency conditions usually encourage changes that are not incremental but tend to be comprehensive, especially in the dimensions of government’s financial administration. This change forces the government to immediately adapt to sudden conditions through the formations of various legal instruments and policies affecting how the government’s finance is run compared to normal conditions. The problem is that the formation of emergency policies often brings a variety of criticisms and concerns about the accountability and legal liability of public finance administration as experienced in Indonesia. Act No. 2/2020 and Perpu No. 1/2020 is a legal basis for the government to manage the public finances during this crisis. Several articles in the policy deviate from the principles of rule of law and government accountability, because they seem to avoid legal accountability and give impunity for the management of public finances during a pandemic. Basically, from the perspectives of administrative and criminal law, the exclusion norms in the policy cannot be applied normatively, because it would contradict the principles of law and good governance. Therefore, the model of the norms of exemption and impunity as such, legally is not a barrier to holding the government accountable because of the violation against the use of public