Muninggar Sri Saraswati and Ati Nurbaiti, Jakarta – Ahead of next week's legislative deliberation on the Aceh governance bill, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle reiterated its opposition, saying the bill would give too much to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
While adding that if the law were passed as it would be seen as bowing to international pressure, ex-President Megawati Soekarnoputri said the government draft could lead to the full independence of Aceh. Addressing a discussion on the bill Thursday held by PDI-P, the party's leader said she and the party "will not share in the responsibility" if Aceh becomes independent.
She added that the process was wrong because the talks began with GAM leaders, she said. Because the GAM leaders had become citizens of Sweden, "as president I refused to meet them, how could they (the Swedes) understand Aceh?" she wondered. "Don't people understand? A peace agreement (which was reached in August between GAM and the current government) can be either rejected, frozen or continued if we so wish."
PDI-P controls 19.8 percent, or 109 out of 550 seats, in the House of Representatives, which is required by the peace agreement to pass the bill on Aceh governance before March 31.
But being the main party opposing the government draft "we'll be overwhelmed by all the other factions, and if need be we'll have to concede defeat with our heads held high," legislator Permadi said.
Other speakers at the meeting, such as former deputy Army chief of staff Lt. Gen. (ret) Kiki Syachnakri, raised similar concerns about the "ignorance of government leaders and facilitators" who drafted the agreement in Helsinki, about the far-reaching impacts of letting Aceh have wide-ranging autonomy, including limited self-governance.
"The thing that I fear most about this is that we now have started moving back to a kind of federalism that could have a domino effect," Kiki said, referring to the time in the early 1950s when Indonesia was largely decentralized and provinces had greater authority over their own governance.
On the other side of the coin, advocates of the draft bill from Aceh's provincial legislative body also oppose some aspects of the government draft, saying it violates much of the spirit of the Helsinki agreements.
One participant, Agung Wijaya of the Aceh Democratic Network, claimed that dialogs between his network and people in Aceh showed that "the spirit of the Acehnese is to remain within the unitary republic," contrary to fears raised by speakers and the legislators of the PDI-P. "There were initially six drafts, but people have said they will support the draft from Aceh's provincial legislative council," Agung said.
Meanwhile, the House's legislation committee approved the government's request Thursday to include the bill in this year's National Legislation Program.
Several legislators also lashed out at Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin for ignoring the House's procedures and skipping the committee meeting on the bill.
However, the House plenary meeting concluded the approval of the bill on Aceh two days earlier, before it was approved by the legislation committee. Hamid said that he had sent a letter to the committee before the plenary meeting, but received no response. He also asked the legislators to finish the deliberation of the bill on time.
Legislator Saifullah Ma'shum said that lawmakers would need more time to finish the deliberation of the bill because "it was a strategic and contentious one".