Fabio Scarpello – When former rebel Irwandi Yusuf was sworn in on Thursday as the first directly elected governor of Indonesia's Aceh province, the ceremony capped one of Southeast Asia's most extraordinary democratic transitions.
The landmark August 2005 peace deal between the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government, which brought a crushing 30-year civil war to an end, also ushered the way for Irwandi's election, which he won convincingly with 38% of the vote. The Acehnese have so far taken enthusiastically to democracy, where 80% of the province's 2.2 million eligible voters cast their ballots.
Those elections were held in an almost festive atmosphere, and were deemed free and fair by both local and international monitors. Hence there are high democratic hopes pinned on the secular 47-year-old Irwandi's governorship, a five-year term that will be empowered through an unprecedented degree of local autonomy.
How the former GAM spokesman addresses growing calls for the implementation of sharia (Islamic) law and tackles the bigger challenge of Aceh's notorious culture of corruption, which has badly stunted the province's post-tsunami recovery, will go a long way in determining the success or failure of Indonesia's center-to-periphery decentralization drive.
An estimated 30,000 people were killed during Aceh's bruising civil war, which was attended by gross human-rights abuses on both sides. The road to peace was paved by the tsunami that hit Aceh on December 26, 2004, which destroyed large swaths of the province, killed nearly 170,000 people, rendered another 500,000 homeless, and dwarfed GAM's and Jakarta's competing political ambitions for the region.
In the midst of unprecedented human disaster, it took only 26 days of consultations before the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). The agreement gave Aceh a large degree of local autonomy in exchange for rebels laying down their weapons and agreeing to co-exist peacefully within the Indonesian republic. The peace deal also significantly included provisions that grant Aceh's local authorities control over 70% of the income generated by the province's rich natural resources, including big deposits of oil and natural gas.
More exceptional, the deal allows for the establishment of local political parties in Aceh, which is still forbidden everywhere else across the Indonesian archipelago. Jakarta withdrew more than 25,000 troops from the war-torn region and granted a full amnesty to former GAM rebels, including those who were either in prison or in hiding in the province's thick jungles. Among those was Irwandi.
Rebel resume
Born in Aceh in 1960, Irwandi was a latecomer to GAM's struggle, joining the resistance in 1998 after years of teaching veterinary science at Aceh's Syah Kualan University. A military strategist and counter-intelligence expert, he was intimately involved in changing GAM's military structure from a territorial one – which implied a loose guerrilla presence throughout the province – to one based on more established battalions and platoons. He also was a participant in the failed 2003 peace talks.
When then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri declared a military emergency, Irwandi was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was literally freed by the tsunami, which smashed through the prison where he was held.
Thereafter Irwandi fled Indonesia and joined the GAM leadership in Helsinki, Finland, where peace talks with the government had already commenced. Once the MoU was signed, Irwandi became GAM's representative to the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM), the European-led mission entrusted to monitor the implementation of the peace deal.
Disagreements with the senior leadership based in Sweden – where GAM held a government-in-exile during the conflict – led to Irwandi losing his job at the AMM and to his decision to run as an independent candidate, paired with Muhammad Nazar, the president of the Center for Information on a Referendum for Aceh (SIRA), a prominent pro-independence non-governmental organization. Nazar likewise spent time in prison for his affiliation with GAM.
Mending the rift within GAM, which some fear could, if not handled delicately, unravel the peace deal, is clearly one of Irwandi's immediate priorities. Significantly Irwandi was not the first choice of GAM's senior leadership, who had put forward Hasbi Abdullah, the brother of GAM's Sweden-based foreign minister Zaini Abdullah. But Hasbi did not have the respect of the Aceh-based commanders and fighters, who resented the fact that he lived abroad during the conflict.
Irwandi soon become the leader of a rebel faction inside GAM, and when a compromise could not be reached, he decided to branch out and run as an independent candidate. Hasbi eventually ran as the vice-governor candidate on a ticket with local academic Humam Hamid, but came in a distant second with 16.2% of the vote – proving to some that GAM's Sweden-based leadership is out of touch with the group's grassroots.
Irwandi has made it clear that he hopes to mend fences, but on this matter, GAM's prime minister, Malik Mahmud, has so far maintained a steely silence since his election win. Splits within GAM could undermine Irwandi's effectiveness as governor and weaken the group's political appeal, local analysts say. GAM is planning to transform itself into a full-blown political party and run candidates in the 2009 national general elections, when seats for the provincial assembly will be up for grabs.
Deep-rooted corruption
Irwandi's most pressing challenge will be to improve the living standards of the 4 million Acehnese, and that means tackling deep-rooted corruption. Despite its bounty of rich natural resources, Aceh is currently the fourth-poorest province in Indonesia. That poverty was intensified by the tsunami, and widespread corruption has misappropriated huge amounts of foreign relief funds earmarked for reconstruction.
About US$7.1 billion was dedicated to Aceh, although only an estimated $4.5 billion has since been committed because of concerns about the local administration's capacity to absorb it. According to the Aceh-based Anti-Corruption Movement, graft has tainted at least 40% of all reconstruction projects. The United Nations estimates that only a third of the homes destroyed by the tsunami have been rebuilt two years on.
Irwandi's has already said he plans to open Aceh's economy to international markets, especially through enhanced trade links with nearby Singapore and Malaysia. Currently the province's main agricultural and fishery products are sold exclusively to and fetch low prices in Medan, the capital of the nearby Indonesian province of North Sumatra.
To pave the way for more foreign trade, Irwandi plans to improve substantially the province's shattered infrastructure, through upgrading ports and airports and creating a direct road link between the eastern and the western coasts of the province. He also has populist plans to offer government soft loans to fishermen, provide cheap land to farmers, make the first 12 years of schooling free to all students, and improve the province's creaky health-care system.
To ram those ambitious plans through, however, Irwandi will need the cooperation of the local parliament and civil service – both viewed widely as the root of the province's corruption scourge. And the two sides are already on collusion course. The 69-member local parliament represents only Jakarta-based parties and was elected for a five-year term in 2004.
He has already threatened to mobilize his grassroots supporters should the parliament, in demands for kickbacks, move to block his development plans. Meanwhile, local bureaucrats appointed by Jakarta have already expressed their concerns that Irwandi may lead a purge of the civil service to replace them with former rebels.
The new governor will also have to contend with the growing power of the local ulama (body of Muslim scholars), which is bent on implementing a stricter interpretation of Islamic sharia law. Known in Indonesia as the "Veranda of Mecca", Aceh was granted the right to legislate provisions of sharia law in 1999, under Abdurrahman Wahid's presidency, when the province was granted special status.
In 2001, president Megawati Sukarnoputri further strengthened the position of sharia by establishing a special Aceh autonomy law, which allowed the creation of Islamic courts. Today the province is the only one in Indonesia that has the legal right to implement sharia in full, although to date it has only been partially applied.
The application of certain Islamic codes has already given rise to a chorus of condemnation from outspoken civil-society groups, who say the laws are biased against women and the poor. Over the past 15 months, at least 135 Acehnese have been whipped for perceived crimes as diverse as drinking alcohol, gambling or having relations deemed illicit with the opposite sex. Women also face lashes for not wearing their headscarves properly in public.
Significantly, GAM has always been a secular movement, and Irwandi has made it clear that he does not support harsh sharia-based punishments. On the election trail, for instance, he took a hard public stand against an ulama-led proposal calling for the dismemberment of people caught and convicted for stealing. At the same time, he cannot risk alienating the ulama in a province that is considered among Indonesia's most devout.
Lingering suspicions
Irwandi will likely need even greater diplomatic skills in his dealings with the central government. He has repeatedly stated his commitment to work within the peace deal's autonomy framework, yet the former rebel is still viewed with suspicion in certain political circles in Jakarta by those who fear he will manipulate his democratic victory as a basis to push for full-blown independence.
Those suspicions have been stoked by Irwandi's stated intention to push for amendments to the Law on Governing Aceh, which was derived from the original understanding. Irwandi has said he believes GAM was shortchanged in the transition, including in relation to the new law on natural-resource management, the role of the military in the province, and the central government's right to make decisions concerning Aceh after mere "consultations" rather than with local "consent".
He is bound to run up against strong opposition from powerful political factions in Jakarta. Chief among them is former president Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, which initially rejected any political role for GAM. Last August, Megawati refused to attend Indonesian National Day celebrations as a protest against the concessions granted to GAM.
Another potential sticking point is the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, a provision requested in the MoU. The creation of a body allowed to probe the darkest days of Aceh's conflict would no doubt upset the military, the main culprit of the conflict's many human-rights abuses. The military has so far stayed the course and respected Jakarta's push for peace, but some fear this could change if a legally backed blame game begins.
Irwandi's governorship, and by association Aceh's young democracy, will soon face several crucial tests.
[Fabio Scarpello is AdnKronos International Southeast Asia bureau chief.]