Roy Tupai – Former East Timorese pro-Indonesia militia leader Eurico Guterres, currently appealing his five-year jail sentence for crimes against humanity, has been elected chairman of National Mandate Party's (PAN) chapter in East Nusa Tenggara province.
He claims he will help PAN win greater support in the 2009 general election. Does he intend to do this by issuing death threats to the electorate, as he did in the months prior to East Timor's referendum on independence? PAN should wise up and ditch this dangerous thug, who has already served time with rival parties Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.
It appears PAN's leaders are grateful to have Guterres on board. He won a landslide victory in the party's provincial leadership election on February 11, picking up 50 of the 67 votes cast at the conclusion of a two-day congress at the Kristal Hotel in Kupang, the main city of West Timor. (West Timor is part of East Nusa Tenggara, which is known locally by the acronym NTT).
Guterres (34), who is close to influential senior Indonesian generals, is the former leader of the feared Aitarak (Thorn) militia group, which unleashed carnage in East Timor in the period surrounding the territory's 1999 vote to secede from Indonesia.
Under strong pressure from the international community to bring Guterres to justice, Indonesian authorities arrested him a couple of times in 2000 on various charges. In April 2001, he was convicted of inciting violence in West Timor and sentenced to six months imprisonment, but ended up serving only 23 days under house detention thanks largely to his powerful military friends. Human rights activists continued to demand he be tried for war crimes, but the military lauded him as a heroic patriot.
In November 2002, Indonesia's special human rights court convicted Guterres of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.
Jakarta High Court in July 2004 reduced his sentence to five years. He still remains free pending the Supreme Court's decision on his current appeal. Some reports have said he is supposed to be under city arrest in Jakarta, yet he seems free to travel where he pleases.
Human rights groups in August 2003 accused Guterres of going to remote Papua province to establish the 'Merah Putih' (Red & White) pro-Indonesia militia group to oppose the separatist Free Papua Organization. Media reports last year alleged that Guterres had visited tsunami-hit Aceh province to assemble a unit of his Army-backed militia to combat the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The thug strongly denied the reports, saying he was confined to Jakarta while continuing his appeal against his jail sentence.
Former parties
Guterres had initially been a member of Golkar, the former political vehicle of Suharto. In June 1999, Golkar had selected Guterres to stand for election in the national parliament.
He left Golkar in March 2000 for then vice president Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which he felt had done the most of any party to help keep East Timor within Indonesia. Megawati in August 2000 appointed him chief of PDI-P's paramilitary youth group, Banteng Pemuda.
Panning for popularity or controversy?
So why has PAN now wooed Guterres? Is the party so desperate for votes that it thinks he will bolster its popularity in predominantly Christian eastern Indonesia?
PAN was founded as a pluralistic and secular party by reformist Muslim leader Amien Rais after the 1998 downfall of former dictator Suharto. Although well known for its consistent anti-corruption stance, the party has failed to become a dominant force in the political arena due to a lack of strong military and populist support.
Appealing mostly to educated urban voters, the party came fifth in the June 1999 general election with just 7.1% of the vote. It fared worse in the April 2004 general election, coming seventh with 6.43% of the vote. The party now holds 52 of the 550 seats in the House of Representatives. Analysts say PAN has lost its pluralist roots over recent years and developed almost exclusively into the political vehicle of the nation's second largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah.
Rais is known for shifting his stance on East Timor to suit his political purposes. He resigned from politics after his failure in the 2004 presidential election and was replaced as PAN leader by Sutrisno Bachir in April 2005.
PAN does not seem concerned that it might scare away voters by having Guterres as one of its members. On the contrary, it seems the party feels he will bring greater support and internal unity.
Deputy secretary general of PAN's central executive board, Muhammad Najib, said Guterres was welcome in the party as long as he followed its rules. He said the former militia leader had long been close to Rais and Bachir, but had only recently joined the party.
He said it was up to the public to determine whether Guterres' involvement in the 1999 violence in East Timor should be seen as a problem. "In my opinion, Eurico was a hero for integration. But the assessment is up to the public."
Najib said PAN was not worried of possible criticism for opening its doors to Guterres. "PAN is an open party. We do not ban anyone from joining. Anyone who wants to exercise his/her political rights in our party is welcomed by us, as long as they have not been legally punished by the courts. We obviously cannot restrict the rights of a citizen to be politically active and become a member of a political party."
When opening the PAN-NTT congress on February 10, party chairman Bachir expressed hope it would take place smoothly without internal conflict. "We must promote the feeling of peace in the organization. PAN-NTT has been small. Don't let there be conflict again that could cause dissent among us," he said.
He emphasized that PAN is not a religion-based party, but is open to all elements of society. "Party members are recruited not only from a certain group [Islam] but from all religions and cultures."
Bachir said PAN's goal is not to seize power but to work in the interests of the people. Therefore, the party's leadership and management should be closer to the people, especially rural communities, rather than focusing solely on urban dwellers, he said.
NTT Governor Piet Tallo, in a speech read out at the congress by his assistant Djidon de Haan, said PAN plays an important in making "positive corrections" to the provincial government. "In the political situation in NTT, PAN plays a very important role in guarding the implementation of democratization," he said.
All that swagger
Prior to the election in Kupang, Guterres had attended a PAN cadre training program in Bogor, West Java, over January 27-29. At the end of the program, he told reporters that Rais had personally invited him to join the party that best represented Indonesia. "Since the onset of reform, I have often been directly involved and studied much with friends of Amien Rais since 1998," he said.
After his victory, he said the election had taken place "very democratically" – possibly implying it was not influenced by death threats or bribes. The election was witnessed by central executive board secretary general Zulkifli Hasan.
Guterres said his main priority in his first six months as PAN-NTT chairman would be to improve relations among the party's officials throughout the province. "So far the wheels of the organization have not been turning because the management is not sufficiently harmonious. In the future, I will try to fix this by making it my priority to hold regional meetings for all local PAN branches in NTT. At the latest, by the middle of this year, all of the local branches will have completed regional conferences."
Guterres expressed confidence that PAN-NTT would help the party to win a greater number of seats in parliament in the 2009 general election. He bragged that most of the more than 100,000 former East Timorese citizens living across the border in West Timor would support him.
"I think that in the next general election, PAN will gain big success by receiving a significant number of votes, especially from East Nusa Tenggara," he was quoted as saying by the Media Indonesia daily.
"Not because I am conceited, but at least 104,000 ex-Timor Leste citizens, who remain loyal to the Indonesian people, will likely follow my tracks by channeling their political aspirations through PAN," he said.
Guterres and other former militia leaders in November 2005 formed an organization to "protect the rights and privileges they feel the government they fought for is now denying them". The organization is chaired by Guterres, who complained that Acehnese rebels were granted amnesty and financial aid after the August 2005 peace deal with GAM, whereas East Timor's former pro-Jakarta fighters have been largely abandoned since 1999.
"They fought to keep Indonesia intact, risking their lives, but the Indonesian government has ignored their sacrifices," he was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post daily.
He has announced plans to visit East Timor to promote friendly dialogue with Indonesia, but the trip might not happen given that his old country has indicted him for rights abuses.
Guterres was also in the headlines when he condemned the January 6 killing by East Timorese Police of three ex-militiamen in East Timor. "On behalf of thousands of former East Timorese refugees in Indonesia, we strongly condemn this brutal and inhumane act by the East Timor border patrol," he said.
He said the shootings were a violation of human rights and must therefore be resolved under prevailing laws.
Indonesia seems to be under little international pressure to put Guterres in jail. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer back in June 2001 said it was "essential for Indonesia's credibility that it moves quickly and decisively against Guterres". He has since dropped such rhetoric.