Achmad Sukarsono, Jakarta – Infighting ahead of the coming landmark Dec. 11 elections in Aceh has hurt the rebel group that stopped its fight to split the province from Indonesia to instead pursue peace, a top think-tank said on Wednesday.
The poll, the first ever direct vote for top executive posts in the province, is a key step towards consolidating the peace deal reached in August 2005.
So far it has succeeded in ending the fighting that killed 15,000 people after the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) launched a struggle for an independent state on Sumatra island's northern tip in 1976.
GAM and the Indonesian government signed the truce under Finnish mediation. The agreement paved the way for the former separatists' involvement in local Aceh politics after they agreed to end their armed rebellion.
The International Crisis Group said in its report that differences over candidates have split GAM's leadership, raising questions about the movement's political future.
"... infighting within GAM is complicating its transition from armed insurgency to political movement," said Sidney Jones, ICG's South East Asia Project Director.
GAM endorses no candidate in the polls in which 2.6 million voters will choose the province's governor and deputy as well as 19 regents and mayors. It plans to transform into a local political party next year as soon as guidelines regulating such entities are issued.
However, several GAM members are running in the December races as independent candidates.
Eight candidates are running for governor and the GAM voting base is split between two candidates, former GAM spokesman Irwandi Yusuf and independent social activist Ahmad Humam Hamid, whose running mate Hasbi Abdullah is a GAM stalwart.
Abdullah spent years in Indonesian jails after he helped his elder brother Zaini flee Indonesia in the late 1970s. Zaini Abdullah is GAM's self-styled foreign minister and a top confident to group patriarch Hasan di Tiro. Earlier this month, Hamid was allegedly attacked by men believed to be supporters of Irwandi.
ICG says the rivalry between the two camps is self-defeating. "GAM has shot itself in the foot with the rift between its old guard and the Irwandi forces," the report said, adding the rivalry has been advantageous to gubernatorial candidates who represent Indonesian national parties.
However, the report also said it could be good for GAM's prospects in the 2009 race if members fail to get the top office.
"Losers in democratic elections can escape responsibility for the mistakes and missteps of victors. By 2009, if a popularly elected gubernatorial team does not deliver greater security and prosperity, the audience for an alternative GAM platform will increase," it said.
The Helsinki agreement came about after months of negotiations, partially spurred by the Dec. 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left around 170,000 Acehnese dead or missing.