Jakarta – Delays in passing a bill clearing the way for elections in Indonesia's Aceh province may play into the hands of former separatist rebels, boosting their strength when the ballots finally come.
The Aceh bill is aimed at cementing a peace deal signed in Helsinki last August between Jakarta and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to end three decades of simmering conflict which killed around 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
According to the peace agreement, the bill would have set the stage for Aceh's first direct gubernatorial vote in April 2006, with elections for local officials to follow; but with the bill still being debated the timetable is now months behind, with August the new target.
Muhammad Qodari, deputy of the Indonesian Survey Circle which conducts regular study on the political trends in Aceh, said the delay could become a blessing in disguise for GAM.
"Standout GAM names do not hold Indonesian passports and they need more time to build the popularity of homegrown candidates," he told Reuters.
Qodari said recognition of an individual's name counts more than his affiliation in elections of executives in Indonesia. "The slower the drafting process, the more chances for GAM to manouevre. Those who try to hold back the bill will only bring benefits to GAM," said Qodari.
The bulk of GAM's political leadership hold foreign passports as a result of going into exile after Indonesia sought to crush the insurgency, which started in 1976.
Other tentative peace agreements and truces were reached in the decades after but the current one, signed last August, has been the most effective and lasting, with surrender of weapons by GAM and withdrawal of troops by the government adding to optimism it will endure.
GAM and Indonesia's government signed the peace deal after months of negotiations spurred by the December 2004 tsunami that left around 170,000 Acehnese dead or missing.
GAM has yet to make a major issue of the lengthy drafting process and missed deadlines for the political bill, adding credence to the view that it doesn't necessarily see the delays as a bad thing for its interests.
GAM's top executive, self-styled prime minister Malik Mahmud, said last week he thought deliberations were going well.
Pro-truce lawmakers said delays were necessary to defuse nationalistic fears the bill would be a gateway for Aceh to split from Indonesia. Debates on the draft's wide-ranging content are still underway without a clear date for a vote.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who heads the strongest party in parliament and was an architect of the peace pact, said last week it might pass in late May, opening the way for polls in August.
However, opposition politicians say there is no timeline. "The deadline is the government's business, not parliament's," said legislator R.K. Sembiring Meliala from the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P), the major opposition party and strongest critic of government Aceh policy.
No pressure, please
"We do not want to be pressured. PDI-P was not included in Helsinki. We were not taken into account then, why are we being forced to be responsible for it now?" Meliala told Reuters.
Swing parties say the legislation process for the Aceh bill is already moving at a quicker pace than most drafts and rushing laws governing an area with a volatile history is risky.
The bill will address, among other things, the touchy area of applying Islamic Sharia law in the staunchly Muslim province, and whether non-Muslims must also follow its rules and be tried in Sharia courts. Indonesian law is officially secular at national level.
The Helsinki truce came about after GAM dropped its insistence on an independent Aceh state and Jakarta promised to issue legislation allowing local political parties, including any group set up by GAM members, to vie for government seats in the province and giving Acehnese control of most of their affairs.
One sticking point in the bill is whether to have articles allowing independent nominees to run before local parties, including GAM's political vehicle, are set up next year.
The government and its allies have backed this proposal and GAM is busy grooming nominees while local media have speculated the ex-rebel group might even team up with an existing national Muslim party to form a matchless gubernatorial ticket.
The opposition argues the idea of having a local political party betrays the country's existing laws that require parties to have branches in more than half Indonesia's 33 provinces.
European Union monitors who have been in Aceh since last year to ensure implementation of security-related parts of the peace pact are now scheduled to stay until the end of the historic polls. Nationalist MPs have grumbled over this extension scheme, arguing Europe wants to interfere in Indonesia's affairs.
[Additional reporting by Diyan Jari and Telly Nathalia.]