Governor Abdullah Puteh was on the front pages of newspapers for weeks in recent months, linking him to corruption in the scandalous purchase of a helicopter and a power generator for the Aceh provincial administration. The Corruption Eradication Commission has named him a suspect in the case.
Now the governor is back in the news with reports of his involvement in the Ladia Galaska project-the controversial construction of a road that cuts across the Leuser Ecosystem Zone in Central Aceh. The project has spent Rp250 billion of the total Rp950 billion allocated under the National Budget. Non-governmental organizations charge Rp26.9 billion of the expenditure has not been properly accounted for. TEMPO traces the ins and outs of the controversy and the impact of the project on the environment.
The door to the examination room of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) finally opened at 8:30pm. A man in an elegant dark suit appeared from behind the door smiling sheepishly. Reporters who had been waiting for hours outside rushed toward the man, Governor of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Abdullah Puteh, only to be blocked by bodyguards who accompanied the provincial chief all the way to his waiting car. With the governor safely seated inside, the car sped away from the KPK office on Jalan Veteran No. 3 in Central Jakarta.
The scene, which took place on a Wednesday in mid-July, was part of a grilling Puteh was subjected to by the KPK over his alleged involvement in a corruption case. The commission has named him a suspect-since June 29, 2004-in the scandalous purchase of a Russian-made Mi-2 PLC Rostov helicopter for the purpose of the provincial government. According to the KPK, the price of the helicopter had been marked up to Rp12.5 billion-Rp4 billion higher than the actual cost [see TEMPO July 26 edition].
Governor of Aceh since 2000, Puteh-a native Acehnese born in Meunasah in the district of Arun on July 19, 1948-began his term at a time when the province was in a state of emergency with the Indonesian Military (TNI) set to launch an offensive against the rebel Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Puteh was sworn into office at the end of November at Bandara Blang Bintang airport, which has since been renamed Iskandar Muda. He was only a month in office when a bomb exploded outside his official residence in Banda Aceh. Four years on, he is now embroiled not only in two cases of corruption connected with the purchase of the Russian helicopter and of a power generator, but also over the controversial construction of the Ladia Galaska highway in Central Aceh.
Four non-government organizations, associated in an anti-corruption group called the Working Group for a Peaceful Corruption-Free Aceh-Walhi Aceh, Sorak, Forum LSM Aceh, and JKMA Aceh-have charged that Ladia Galaska, which cuts across the Leuser Ecosystem Zone is being built at a cost higher by Rp26.97 billion than originally estimated. The figure, they said, was found in the difference
between the calculations in the project budget and those stated in Puteh's annual report to the Aceh legislature for 2002.
Ladia Galaska has been a subject of quarrel between the local NGOs and the governor ever since the project was launched in 2002. On July 4, 2004, the Banda Aceh District Court ruled in favor of Puteh over the dispute. A coalition of 24 NGOs had asked the court to stop the project, charging it would, if carried out, destroy the ecosystem in the Leuser tropical forests. The government has by Presidential Decree No. 33/1998 declared 1.8 million hectares of land within the Leuser Ecosystem Zone a conservation area.
Puteh, against the opposition of NGOs, ordered Ladia Galaska to go ahead, saying it was a project supported by the central government and the legislature.
The project is funded by money drawn from the National Budget (APBN).
Reaffirming support for the project, Settlements and Regional Infrastructure Minister Soenarno says: "If you want to drop the project, that should be by decision of the legislature." In an article titled Ladia Galaska and Environmental Destruction, (see TEMPO January 29, 2004 edition) former Environment Minister Emil Salim notes that Ladia Galaska (with a budget of Rp950 billion allocated under the APBN) was rejected by both the Forestry and Environment Departments and the National Development Planning Board. Emil writes that the project was insupportable as it didn't pass through centers of economic activities in the area.
Puteh refuted Emil's view. In a recent conversation with TEMPO, he said the purpose of Ladia Galaska was precisely to "link centers of economic activities in the west coast (Indian Ocean) and those in the east coast (Malacca Straits)." Puteh's assertion was supported by the House of Representatives' (DPR) Commission VI which wanted the project to continue. "What's being done is in the interest of the people," says Indra Prayitno, commission member representing the Indonesian National Unity faction. "Why should there be people who still think only of the interest of the monkeys in the forests?" he asks.
Tempo's report on Ladia Galaska showed that not only the interests of the people are being ignored-contrary to Prayitno's claim-those of the monkeys are too. In a recent visit to Blangkejeren-Dusun Gajah, a 16-kilometer section of Ladia Galaska, TEMPO found the big trees on both sides of the road were gone, depriving the beruk (short-tailed macaque) and siamang (gibbon) of their natural habitat.
In the interests of the people? TEMPO didn't see what happened on other parts of the road. But at the 16-kilometer stretch between Blangkejeren and Dusun Gajah traveled by TEMPO in more than three hours, no signs of economic activities were seen, no cars passing by, the only activities the siamang jabbering high up in the trees deep in the forests and two slash-and-burn farmers at the entrance to the road. Most of the villagers chose to travel by the old road down the hill which had been in existence long before Ladia Galaska.
Angsar, the village head of Dusun Gajah, charged Ladia Galaska had only robbed the forest of its trees. "They came here only to cut the trees down to the last one." Angsar said he saw with his own eyes how the men cut down the trees and carried them away in trucks out of the forests to make way for Ladia Galaska.
Could it that the Blangkejeren-Gajah section isn't part of the road to be turned into a beehive of economic activities by Ladia Galaska? Governor Puteh told TEMPO with confidence that the project would break the isolation of the villages and open a new economic route between the west and the east coast.
Puteh illustrated the isolation of the villages with a bit of humor. He said fish caught by fishermen from waters in the Indian Ocean would come to life on arrival for sale in Takengon in Central Aceh. "It's not that the fish are coming to, but the maggots squirming in the bodies of the fish which decomposed after so long a journey," he said with a laugh. Ladia Galaska, he said, was designed to facilitate communication between the west and east costs of Aceh across 470 kilometers of land. Funds for the Rp950 billion project, carried out under a multi-year contract from 2003 to 2006, derive from the central government. Although not yet politically inaugurated, Ladia Galaska was begun in 2002, initially jointly funded with money from the national and provincial budgets. Puteh told TEMPO that in the past two years a total of Rp250 billion, including Rp100 billion in 2003, had been spent with funds from the central government to upgrade the road from the status of a provincial to a state road. "For the year 2004, a total of Rp150 billion is being allocated," he said.
Karimun Usman, of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction and chairman of the DPR Commission on Settlements and Regional Infrastructure, fully supported the project. "The project will break the isolation of six districts in the hinterland to link with the coastal areas," said Usman who strongly disagreed with the NGOs that Ladia Galaska would do great damage to the environment. "I tell you that it's precisely the European Community for Leuser that's damaging the environment. Write it down," he told TEMPO heatedly.
So it was that with the support of the legislators the bulldozers continue to cause destruction to the forests to the dismay of environmental activists.
Protest demonstrations were organized to stop Ladia Galaska. In its annual report the Leuser Management Unit (UML) said it spent Rp29 million in public campaign against Ladia Galaska from November 2002 to November 2003.
Usman was offended by the action of UML. "It's this kind of thing that has aroused the Acehnese to anger," he said. Hasjrul Djunaid, of LSM Skephi, responded by saying it was the natural thing to do by UML. "It's only natural that UML is funding the campaign because it wants Leuser preserved."
Environmental activists were also angered by the lack of a proper environmental impact analysis (Amdal) before the start of the project.
"The Amdal generalizes all sections of the road and that's a wrong thing to do," Hariadi Kartodihardjo, of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, told TEMPO.
Bambang Antariksa, of Walhi Aceh, totally dismissed the Amdal by saying "the project was unacceptable from the very beginning."
What's more galling to the environmentalist was that Ladia Galaska began even before the Amdal was approved by the Environment Department. Nabiel Makarim, the Environment Minister, warned at a cabinet meeting in June that the project, if carried through, would alienate the Acehnese in their own land.
When the court ruled in favor of Puteh in the dispute over the legality of Ladia Galaska, the NGOs turned to another charge against the governor: involvement in a Rp26.97 billion fraud in the project. They charged Puteh with failure to account for certain expenditures in his annual report to the Aceh legislative council in August 2003. The governor responded by saying that the Rp26.97 billion corruption charge had been made by people "who don't understand the mechanism of developing funding." He called his detractors people "who only shout from outside, but never want to sit down and discuss the issue together with us."
In its investigation of the charge TEMPO also found many irregularities in the implementation of the project. However, while the NGOs put eight sections of the road to be financed by APBN, this magazine found only four to be so funded. Also the NGOs seemed to have ignored the revision that had been made to the provincial list of projects (DIP), basing their charge on the original DIP which was published on January 1, 2002, not on the revised version published on October 28, 2002 (see infographic).
In Tempo's calculations there was an expenditure of about Rp9.4 billion in Puteh's report which was yet to be cleared up and Rp2.2 billion yet to be accounted for by the governor.
Although funding is a vital issue, it's only one of the aspects of the controversy surrounding the Ladia Galaska project. It's intangible losses-losses that cannot be measured in terms of money-that matter most.
According to the Department of the Environment, the project is likely to cause serious damage to the environment, including destruction of the forests, landslides, and the isolation of one area under development from another. The department also questions the economic benefits of the project.
Ladia Galaska is not a new project. Sections of the road were in operation a decade ago. Originally the project was called Program Jaring Laba-Laba (the Spider's Web Program) in the early 1990s. It was renamed Proyek 16 Ruas Jalan Tembus (the 16-Section Thruway Project) when Syamsudin Mahmud was governor in the late 1990s. In 2000 Governor Puteh continued the project with Ladia Galaska further extending the road from the west to the east coast of Aceh.
Ladia Galaska is an acronym for Lautan Hindia, Gayo Alas and Selat Malaka-a project that has drawn widespread criticisms as it threatened to destroy the ecosystem in the Leuser area of Central Aceh.
Antariksa, of Walhi Aceh, says the government should be thankful to the NGOs for reminding it of the potential damage the project would on the environment with the construction of a road that cuts across the Leuser Ecosystem Zone.
Muhyan Yunan, head of the Aceh Regional Infrastructure Office, strongly denied Ladia Galaska was trespassing on Leuser. "On the contrary, it's the Leuser Ecosystem Zone that's trespassing on Ladia Galaska because the road has been in existence long before the area was declared an ecosystem zone," he said fierily.
Still, he said, a decision has been made to defer construction of feeder roads in and out of the main highway. Therefore, only 470 kilometers of the road would be built through 2006. The original plan called for the construction of a 1,587-kilometer road.
Apparently Ladia Galaska is not only a matter of "breaking economic isolation." Muhyan said: "The road is being built based on social and political considerations." It's being built, he added, at the request of the people of Aceh to the central government in Jakarta-for a road that will break the isolation of areas in Central Aceh. Plans are for the TNI to build new bases on locations in the south and southeastern parts of the province.
During an interview with TEMPO at the Mandarin Hotel early last month, Governor Puteh drew a sketch of Ladia Galaska on a white board, saying the project, if completed, would cut travel time from the west to the east coast from 12 to just four hours.
At the western edge of the 16-kilometer Blangkejeren-Dusun Gajah section, village head Angsar and his wife said they won't go by the new road.
"We'll buy ourselves a horse." No public transport operates in the area-except for people with an adventurous spirit like Anwar who took TEMPO in his Toyota jeep on the road from Blangkejeren to Dusun Gajah.
Like most people in the area, Angsar and Salabiah chose to go by the old road. The new road, located up the hill at a steep height, denies them easy access to their farms and the river water below.