Supporting syariah, advancing women

Inside Indonesia

The life and work of an Islamic teacher in Aceh shows that the struggle for gender equality is about much more than syariah.

David Kloos



Umi Rahimum at her dayah
David Kloos

In Aceh, a special formulation of Islamic law, the qanun, was implemented in 2003, and ever since, national and international media covering Aceh have been obsessed with it. Although this interest is perhaps understandable, it also results in distorted, incomplete, and sometimes false portrayals of local dynamics.

The issue of gender equality is a case in point. Media claiming to present a balanced view of current events in Aceh often concentrate on the public debate between fierce defenders of Islamic law on the one hand, and Aceh’s critical, visible and eloquent women’s rights movement on the other. While locating and portraying this debate is itself laudable (most media reports do not even reach this degree of sensitivity), what also happens is that the broader struggle for gender equality is equated with the debate about syariah. But in reality, this struggle takes multiple forms.
Umi Rahimun’s story

It is possible to illustrate this point by narrating, in very broad strokes, the life, work, and ideas of Umi Rahimun, a female religious teacher who lives in a rural area just outside the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. Umi Rahimun (the address umi, or umm, means ‘mother’ in Arabic) is the leader of a dayah – a traditional Islamic school – that she founded in 2001.

The vast majority of the boys and girls attending her school, of which there are well over 300, are of primary school age. They go to ‘ordinary’ (secular) school in the morning, and in the afternoon they go to Rahimun’s school. There they are taught elementary religious knowledge and skills, such as reading and reciting the Quran. In the evening a new group of around 60 older students arrives to study more advanced subjects, such as Quranic interpretation, Islamic jurisprudence, and mysticism.

Rahimun was born in 1968 in a well-to-do family in Banda Aceh. Her father, after a short military career, had been a prosperous textile trader. However, in the 1970s the family became impoverished, and her childhood was characterised by economic hardship, the divorce of her parents, and the death of her mother when she was 14 years old. While it had been Rahimun’s childhood dream to become a teacher, after she finished high school her family was too poor for her to enrol in teachers college. Instead, she decided to pursue her studies in a dayah. First she studied for two years in Samalanga in North Aceh. After that she moved to one of the largest and most prestigious dayah in Aceh, the Dayah Darussalam in South Aceh, where she spent six years.

Rahimun came back to Banda Aceh in 1996, immediately after the death of her father. Although by that time she was 27 years old, she decided that it was still too early to find a job or get married. Instead, she enrolled in the state Islamic university, a somewhat unusual move for an alumnus of a traditional dayah. By then, she was able to make a living teaching private religious lessons to children of wealthy families.

When she graduated in 2003, she had already established her own school in a village where her family owned some land. At the time, the armed conflict in Aceh between the Acehnese separatist movement and the Indonesian army had escalated, and Rahimun’s older sister especially objected to the idea of a woman going to live alone in a rural area at a time of civil war. But Rahimun pushed through, and assisted by a former classmate from the university, whom she married in 2004, she eventually made her school into the successful institution it is today.
Education and ambition

In recalling her life story, Umi Rahimun speaks proudly about the way she was able to combine ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ education, each with its particular virtues. At the same time, she criticises the division between secular and religious schools as unnatural, and a product of Dutch colonialism. Although she shares this view with many other ulama (religious scholars), she also explicitly acts on it.

While teaching a religious curriculum, she tries to avoid the normative, black and white (halal versus haram, or allowed versus forbidden) view of the world encountered in many dayah. In her view, a narrow focus on personal worship and rules of behaviour does not offer enough preparation to help solve today’s big problems, such as pollution, war, or corruption. She regards such issues equally as ‘moral’ problems, and actively discusses them in her lessons. In addition, she encourages her students to search for knowledge elsewhere. In fact, most of her evening students also study at the Islamic university or the (secular) Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh.



Learning the basics: day students study how to recite the Quran
David Kloos

Seeking knowledge beyond the dayah is crucial, she believes, because the centuries-old religious treatises making up the dayah curriculum ‘tell you nothing about climate change or the hole in the ozone layer’.

Umi Rahimun also urges her female students to learn about Islam while ‘becoming doctors and scientists’. She blames culturally defined patriarchal relations (not Islam) for the subordinate role of women in Acehnese society: ‘Islam does not forbid women to work outside the household, and women in Aceh have always done so. In fact, there is no difference between working on a rice field and working in an office, but there is still a lack of understanding in our culture, which makes some men claim that women cannot work as teachers or in offices. This needs to be changed.'

In this respect Umi Rahimun explicitly thinks of herself as part of the Acehnese women’s rights movement. But this does not mean she merely criticises ‘men’ or ‘culture’. She argues that Acehnese women should also raise their own expectations and ambitions. In engaging with her female students, she keeps repeating that they ‘should not be fearful, not let themselves be restricted, and become smart and eloquent’. This is especially important, says Umi Rahimun, if they want to help restore the existing imbalance in Aceh between men and women in important leadership positions. ‘According to Islam, the husband leads his wife. But this goes only for the household. Outside the household women are equal to men and may take up positions according to their capabilities. So why then, if I enter the Office for Religious Affairs in Banda Aceh, and I look at the leadership chart on the wall, do I only see the faces of men?’

Umi Rahimum argues that Acehnese women should also raise their own expectations and ambitions. In engaging with her female students, she keeps repeating that they ‘should not be fearful, not let themselves be restricted, and become smart and eloquent’

While the school is Rahimun’s most important platform, another activity into which she weaves her activist agenda is teaching Islam to adult women at weekly classes in various locations. She told me that, at first, she became anxious if her students’ questions strayed far from the topics which are central to the centuries-old texts that are the foundation of teaching and discussion in a dayah. Such topics might include proper practices of worship, marriage, or inheritance. However, over the course of years she has become more confident about discussing contemporary issues and problems. Nowadays, she discusses topics such as divorce, domestic violence, sexuality and reproductive health or sexually transmitted diseases (like HIV/AIDS), if possible relating solutions to examples drawn from the old texts.

Doing so is sometimes difficult. The treatises normally used in the dayah are notoriously patriarchal and male-centred. At the same time, she is not confined to them either. When her adult students ask her whether Islam allows them to demand help from their husbands in the household, she uses the well known story of the Prophet Muhammad sewing his own clothes to show that it is perfectly right to ask for help, or even obligatory. As for more fraught subjects, such as domestic violence and the right to divorce, it is sometimes necessary to move straight to the Quran. Thus, she urges women to read the phrases in the Quran about the rights of women, asking them rhetorically, ‘how can men be able to lead their families when they cannot act morally themselves?’
Thinking about gender

Umi Rahimun traces her ideas about gender relations and the education of women to several influences. She mentions both her parents: her father who, employing the vocabulary of an army veteran, had always encouraged her to be ‘strong and brave’, to ‘struggle’, and even to become a ‘patriot’ and a ‘hero’; and her mother, who, even though working as a housewife, was always busy teaching other women in her neighbourhood how to cook, sew, and manage a household.



Umi Rahimum and her staff
David Kloos

Another important influence was her teacher in Labuhan Haji, the dayah where she spent six years (including three as a teacher). Her teacher had been ‘less narrow-minded’ than most ulama, often telling his students to pursue knowledge outside the confines of the dayah. Today, her main influence is an altogether different source, namely the connections she forges with various women’s organisations and activists in Banda Aceh, which help her to increase her vocabulary about women’s rights and stiffen her determination to improve the position of women. Finally, in conversations she always stresses her own personal struggle to overcome hardships as a crucial inspiration.

Of course, all of this does not necessarily mean that Umi Rahimun is morally less conservative than many of her male colleagues. For example, when talking to her students about sexuality, she will just as readily discuss the necessity to cover their body as she will the issue of women’s rights. And while she disseminates knowledge about HIV, she also connects the spread of the virus to what she thinks of as morally reprehensible acts like adultery and prostitution, emphasising the necessity of an ‘ethical life’ and ‘control of desire’. She is against abortion, even in the case of rape, because it is ‘prohibited by Islam’. But at the same time she underlines that young boys especially should be educated about such matters, arguing that, in the case of rape, it is men – not women – who act immorally.
Syariah is not the point

Coming back again to the issue of syariah, it may not be surprising that Umi Rahimun supports its implementation in Aceh. However, her support does not mean that she is not critical of its application. Like many other Acehnese, she complains that the way Islamic law is now implemented punishes the behaviour of women rather than men, and ordinary people rather than the elite. Thus she questions politicians’ and administrators’ zealousness in patrolling headscarves and tight pants, ‘while not doing anything about the drunks and gangsters harassing women and men in bus terminals’. Their one-sided view, she suspects, probably has more to do with increasing their own power and visibility than with the moral uplifting of Acehnese society.

But this is not really the point I want to make here. In fact, Umi Rahimun’s story has little to do with syariah. Yet it has everything to do with changing gender relations and the practices that evolve from them. In her lessons she discusses the importance of moral behaviour, but also the lack of women in leadership structures, and how to remedy this situation. Her mission is for Acehnese women to become trained, disciplined, knowledgeable, and therefore ready to be amongst Aceh’s future leaders.

It is true that most leaders and students of the Acehnese dayah, including women, are supporters of the new syariah laws. However, this does not automatically mean that these women cannot also be agents in the female struggle for gender equality. Umi Rahimun’s story shows that to understand the struggle for women’s rights in Aceh one must look beyond the division between conservative patriarchal male leaders on the one hand, and urban, progressive, middle-class female activists on the other. The picture that results may be more ambivalent, but it is also more realistic.

David Kloos (d.kloos@let.vu.nl) is a PhD candidate at the History department of the VU University, Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He is currently conducting research on Islamic education and everyday Islam in Aceh.

Sharia tightens its grip on Banda Aceh

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By Kathy Marks

Patrols are on the lookout for unmarried couples, although the Indonesian province has stopped short of stoning adulterers

It is late afternoon; the light is softening and young people have gathered at the harbour in Banda Aceh to play music, buy an ice cream and just hang out. Suddenly the tranquillity of the scene is shattered when two black pick-ups arrive and discharge a dozen men and women in olive uniforms.

The officers approach a couple sitting in the shade. One says: "We're here to enforce local regulation 14. Are you married?" Shamefaced, the boy and girl shake their heads. The officers examine their identity papers, then order them to leave. The couple ride off on their motorbike, flushed with embarrassment.

It's all in a day's work for the Wilayatul Hisbah, a special unit established to enforce sharia in the staunchly Muslim province of Aceh, on the western tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island. The unit patrols several times a day, looking out for people drinking alcohol, gambling, unmarried couples, and women wearing tight clothes or not wearing an Islamic headscarf, a jilbab.

Aceh - known as the "Veranda of Mecca" because Islam entered Indonesia there centuries ago - won the right to implement sharia law in 2001, after the province was granted semi-autonomy as part of efforts to end a decades-long separatist war. In recent years, the law has been enforced with increasing rigour, with dozens of public canings carried out.

In September the provincial parliament approved a new criminal code that includes a provision for adulterers to be stoned to death. The move was condemned by human rights groups, and has alarmed local businessmen, who fear it will harm Aceh's attempts to attract investment following the tsunami five years ago. The provincial governor, Irwandi Yusuf, has refused to sign the new code, so for now it remains in an uncomfortable limbo. That has not prevented the Wilayatul Hisbah, sometimes compared with Saudi Arabia's notorious "vice and virtue" police, from pursuing their task with zeal. And Aceh is not alone. Across Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, dozens of local governments - given wide scope to enact their own laws under a decentralised system - have adopted Islamic regulations on dress and behaviour.

The trend threatens to undermine Indonesia's reputation for fostering a moderate brand of Islam, yet the creeping fundamentalism is not widely endorsed. At elections earlier this year, support for Islamic parties plummeted, at national level and also in Aceh. Many Acehnese abhor the stoning penalty, although few are prepared to criticise it publicly for fear of being labelled bad Muslims.

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Observers say a radical Islamist minority is being allowed to hijack the agenda, and in Aceh that minority is certainly making headway. In October, clerics denounced an Acehnese woman who failed to wear a jilbab while competing in a national beauty pageant. From 1 January, tight trousers will be banned in one district.

Iskandar, head of the Wilayatul Hisbah, or "Wi-Ha", as it is known colloquially, applauds such measures. "In our religion, it's forbidden to wear tight clothes, because they can show the body shape and arouse men's desire to do things with women," he explains. "It's all about protecting women and increasing respect for them. Before sharia law, women were dressing impolitely and getting pregnant outside marriage. That has all decreased now."

At Wi-Ha's dilapidated headquarters in central Banda Aceh, Iskandar is in charge of 62 officers, including 16 women. "Right now three of them are pregnant," he confides, adding hastily: "All are married, of course."

For the dusk patrol, six women and six men set off in the two vehicles, men in front, women following. They cruise slowly towards the harbour, then suddenly veer off sharply to the right. Two young couples have been spotted behaving suspiciously.

It turns out that they are just sitting together in a public place. But Kuzri, the patrol leader, gives them a stiff warning nonetheless. "It's preventative action, to make sure nothing else happens," he says. "We told them that to be together in a romantic way if not married can be dangerous and is actually forbidden. It can lead to bigger things, and on to adultery." ("Adultery", in Aceh, means any kind of illicit sex.)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Further on, a girl and boy take off on a motorbike as soon as the sharia police arrive. "Actually we're brother and sister, but we were leaving anyway," says the boy. Another couple, who are fishing off some rocks, say they are married. Kuzri believes them. "You can tell whether people are married," he says. "First the location: married people don't need to find a secluded place to spend time with their spouses. Unmarried couples will try to find a place out of sight. Also, they sit next to each other, very close. People who are married don't do that."

It may seem semi-farcical, yet those who transgress the moral code can be caned, even if the stoning law has yet to be enacted. Critics say the code discriminates against women and poor people (since rich couples can go to a hotel), intrudes into private lives, encourages vigilantism and violates the Indonesian constitution. Iskandar receives about 20 anonymous tip-offs a day. A man is spotted going into a hair and beauty salon; he is suspected of visiting prostitutes. An unmarried couple are seen entering a house at 7pm and not leaving until dawn. "What do you think they were doing all that time?" asks Iskandar. He laughs. "Just sleeping or talking?"

But he insists that Aceh is "very different from Afghanistan", and says no one has been caned since he took over last year. "I prefer to give people advice, maybe call in their parents. I think caning is not a good solution." He leans forward conspiratorially. "Actually, I hate caning," he says.

While there is support for sharia, particularly in socially conservative rural areas, many Acehnese have reservations. Lindawati, a seamstress, says: "Women are dressing more modestly now, and there are fewer cases of adultery, which is good. But as for the stoning regulation, I don't know how I would feel if one of my family had to suffer that kind of punishment."

Back at the harbour, a woman selling barbecued sweetcorn by the roadside is displeased to see Kuzri's team. "To be honest, most people don't like the sharia police," she says. One of her customers, a young man, agrees. "I got a warning for being out with my girlfriend," he says. "It's annoying. We weren't doing anything wrong."

But the Wi-Ha is happy in its work. "There are two advantages of our job," says Herman. "We get to carry out our duties, and we also get blessed by God because we're strengthening Islam."

Related articles by Zemanta

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Inside Indonesia - Islam and nation

Review: Edward Aspinall’s ambitious study of the Acehnese rebellion provides valuable insights into this complex conflict

Steven Drakeley

I always invite my students of Southeast Asian politics to reflect upon the similarities and differences between the rebellions in Aceh, Patani, and Mindanao. Protracted conflicts involving rebellions against central governments by Muslims, they involve complex concepts and questions, including those of identity (nationalism, ethnicity, and religion) and state-building in the wake of the decolonisation process. Brighter students become intrigued by the starkly different trajectory of the Aceh case, including the ‘puzzling situation’ of ‘how a society famed for its Islamic piety gave rise to a guerrilla movement that ended up rejecting the Islamic goals of its forebears’, as the cover blurb of this new classic puts it. My future students will find in Aspinall’s excellent study many of the answers to the questions raised during their reflection on the rebellions. They will find much else besides.

Although expressed with characteristic modesty, this is an ambitious study. Aspinall has set out to provide a balanced and thorough historical narrative of the Aceh conflict, while simultaneously discussing the Acehnese case in relation to a broad array of theoretical debates and comparative studies associated with Islam, nationalism, civil wars, and internal conflict. The objective is not merely to employ these theoretical perspectives as analytical tools to facilitate his study of Aceh, which he does to great effect. The aim is also to contribute - through his treatment of the Acehnese case - to the broader comparative debates. Based on years of painstaking research, including several hundred interviews conducted in Aceh as well as in other countries such as Sweden and Malaysia, this study succeeds in attaining its lofty aims. In the process Aspinall has delivered an abundance of important insights, packaged into a sustained and subtle series of interconnected arguments elegantly presented which add greatly to our understanding of the conflict in Aceh and to its apparent resolution.

My future students will find in Aspinall’s excellent study many of the answers to the questions raised during their reflection on the rebellions. They will find much else besides

Amongst his key findings, Aspinall shows how a series of contingent circumstances and some specific decisions by key individuals led logically (but certainly not inexorably) to the re-emergence of an Acehnese rebellion in 1976 in a separatist and nationalist form as GAM (the Free Aceh Movement); rather than reviving as something along the lines of its earlier Islamist form (despite the strong family links between Darul Islam and GAM participants). He goes on to persuasively explain how the intrinsic logic of GAM’s goal of an independent nation state compelled the construction of a nationalist narrative and an Acehnese identity sharply differentiated from Indonesia. Combined with other factors, including its internationalist strategy and certain sociological changes, this propelled GAM further in a nationalist and secularist direction. Later the same factors, combined with shifts in the political context, notably the collapse of the Suharto regime, propelled GAM towards adopting a democracy and human rights discourse. Paradoxically, at first glance, Aspinall goes on to show how ‘some of the ingredients that had helped GAM’s growth as a nationalist insurgency also proved critical to its decision to abandon the independence goal’.

Based on years of painstaking research, including several hundred interviews conducted in Aceh as well as in other countries such as Sweden and Malaysia, this study succeeds in attaining its lofty aims

There is much more for those interested in the Aceh conflict, including sophisticated and unromanticised analyses of GAM’s (relative) success as an insurgency, and of its multi-dimensional nature including its sometimes ambiguous relationships with the state apparatus. The book also succeeds admirably on its comparative studies level, sustaining a rich and fruitful dynamic between the particulars of the Acehnese context and ‘wider theories about nationalism, its relations with religion and about civil war’. Those interested in these wider questions rather than in Aceh per se will surely find this work equally rewarding.

I took (only) this book with me to read on a recent short visit to Aceh, my first since 1978. Quite apart from the book’s intellectual worth, I am immensely grateful to its author for providing such a ‘page turner’ for the flights and airport waiting - not a comment that can often be made about academic studies. ii

Edward Aspinall. Islam and Nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009. 312 pp.

Steven Drakeley (S.Drakeley@uws.edu.au) is a lecturer in Asian and International Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney.

Regulation In Aceh Backs Child Protection - The Jakarta Globe

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Authorities in staunchly Islamic Aceh on Thursday launched an effort to disseminate awareness of the need to strengthen protection of children through the publication of 9,000 copies of a local religious regulation on the matter.

The distribution of the kanun , or regulation based on the canons on Islam, was aimed at ensuring local officials, academics, social workers and the public were aware of child protection issues.

“This kanun is a reflection of our commitment to the best child protection principles as mandated by the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf said in a Unicef news release.

The provincial legislature approved the kanun in December, creating a historic milestone by putting the rights of children at the forefront of legal and moral obligations. Aceh was granted the ability to issue its own laws as part of its special autonomy status.

The new publication will help to spread awareness of the kanun, Unicef said.

The organization has supported the drafting of the kanun and funded the development of the bilingual publication, which will be distributed to all related provincial and district departments, academics, nongovernmental organizations, social workers, orphanages, Islamic boarding schools and public schools.

The 2004 tsunami that devastated Aceh paved the way for the kanun. Some 2,853 children in the province were left without one or both parents and were in need of legal protection. Additionally, thousands of children were also left orphans from the 30-year separatist conflict in the region, which ended after a peace agreement was reached in 2006.

The four principles of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child are covered in the kanun: non-discrimination, best interests of the child, the right to live, grow and develop, and the right to participate. The kanun is also based on the national Child Protection Law and provides legal protection from exploitation, violence and abuse.

“This kanun is proof of turning a tragedy into an opportunity and building back better with not just brick and mortar, but with legal basis and laws to protect children,” said Angela Kearney, Unicef’s Indonesia representative.

“The challenge, now, is how to turn this legal framework into supporting bylaws and policies, so it can be implemented to create a sustainable environment to protect the children of Aceh.”

Unicef is also assisting the development of further technical regulations and advocacy to ensure the implementation of the kanun with the provincial government’s social affairs office and child protection bureau.

Aceh Economic Update

This economic update highlights the following in its overview: growth in Aceh's non-oil and gas economy declined sharply in 2008 as the reconstruction effort winds down; agriculture is not sustaining previous growth rates and has failed to become an engine of growth after the reconstruction effort; domestic consumption continues to drive the local economy; and inflation continues to decline. This paper includes sections on: overview; gross domestic product; employment; trade; banking sector; inflation; and economic outlook 2009.

Complete Report Official version of document (may contain signatures, etc)
PDF	6 pages	Official Version	[0.42 mb]
Text		Text Version*
*The text version is uncorrected OCR text and is included solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Document Date:	2009/05/01
Document Type:	Newsletter
Report Number:	49187
Volume No:	1 of 1

Aceh Growth Diagnostic

This report shows that some investors still perceive Aceh as a risky place to do business, despite being relatively peaceful for almost four years. Security incidents, relatively common in post-conflict environments, deter businesses and individuals from investing in Aceh, robbing the economy of necessary capital and innovation. Other consequences of the conflict, including forms of illegal taxation, also hurt investment. The Government of Aceh is aware that until businesses and people change their perceptions of security in Aceh and feel confident that they can reap the full benefits of their investments, little investment will be forthcoming. As a result, growth in the province will be limited and efforts to reduce poverty less effective. There are other problems affecting Aceh's economy. These include the business environment, access to capital and the quality of infrastructure. This report seeks to show how these different factors affect investment and growth, and provides recommendations on how the Government might prioritize and sequence policy changes to improve the investment climate.

Complete Report Official version of document (may contain signatures, etc)
PDF	77 pages	Official Version	[5.39 mb]
Text		Text Version*
*The text version is uncorrected OCR text and is included solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Document Date:	2009/07/01
Document Type:	Policy Note
Report Number:	49568
Volume No:	1 of 1

The Aceh Party

Blair Palmer

Victory for the Aceh Party, but will it sink or swim? Adrian Morel

April’s legislative elections may have seemed like business as usual in most of Indonesia, but in Aceh the poll was preceded by mysterious murders, widespread intimidation, and a series of arson attacks against party offices. There was also intense concern, both in Aceh and in Jakarta, about what the results would mean for Aceh’s peace process. In the end, although the shortcomings were many, widespread violence did not break out, there were no major disruptions on polling day, and the results mean that peace is likely to continue at least into the medium term.

The elections were an important part of the peace process which had put an end to a three-decade conflict between GAM (the Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian government. The Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of August 2005 stipulated that local parties could be formed in Aceh to contest these elections, unlike in other parts of the country where only parties showing they have a broad nationwide presence are allowed to run. Former GAM members formed the ‘Aceh Party’ (Partai Aceh, or PA), and five other local parties were formed, to contest parliament seats at the district and provincial levels (but not seats in the national parliament, which were still reserved for national parties). The opportunity for GAM members to compete for political power without having to work through the national political parties was a vital part of the peace deal, since without this avenue to access power in Aceh GAM may have been unwilling to give up demands for independence.

The 2009 elections were actually the second stage of political inclusion of former combatants. The MoU had also mandated that independent candidates could contest local elections (for district heads and governor) held in Aceh in 2006 and 2007. Former GAM members or nominees won as governor and as district head in ten of 21 of Aceh’s districts. After these victories, it was widely anticipated that the Aceh Party would do well in 2009. The main other contender among the local parties was believed to be SIRA, the party of the deputy governor, which had a following particularly amongst post-1998 activists in the Aceh student movement.

Violence and intimidation

However, the lead-up to the 2009 elections was marred by heightened tensions and violence, and there was widespread intimidation during the campaign period. A number of party offices throughout the province became the target of arson, grenade attacks, and drive-by shootings, causing no fatalities but raising political tensions dramatically. The Aceh Party was the most frequent target. From September 2008 until April 2009 there were 32 such attacks, with 27 targeting Aceh Party offices, four targeting the offices of other local parties, and only one targeting the office of a national party.

five mysterious murders of people associated with the Aceh Party or the KPA

There were also five mysterious murders of people associated with the Aceh Party or the KPA (the Aceh Transitional Committee), an organisation representing former GAM members. These murders were not solved quickly, and although some seem to have been related to economic competition rather than political grudges, they heightened tensions and augmented the image that cadres and supporters of the Aceh Party were oppressed.

Once the period of active campaigning began in March 2009, various forms of intimidation put pressure on both campaigners and voters. Many parties reported feeling ‘not brave enough’ to campaign in regions where GAM was traditionally strong, such as along the east coast. Party representatives explained that people tore down all non-PA posters and banners as soon as campaigners left PA base areas, and that they could not hope to get many votes in such places anyway as most of the people were loyal to PA. Those who were not, they said, were subject to intimidation by PA cadres warning them not to listen to other parties. Although all parties were assigned dates and locations to hold open rallies, in such PA-dominated areas very few parties used these rights. One election official described this situation by saying that in his district, ‘there was no democracy at all’.

In parts of the province where GAM had not been strong during the conflict period, it was PA supporters who felt intimidated. There were some reports of bureaucrats and military figures advising citizens to stay away from local parties. In the central highlands district of Bener Meriah, an event was held in February to remember victims of the ‘GAM separatist conflict’. According to a member of the SIRA party, the district head had spoken at the event, reminding locals not to vote for local parties as they were all GAM people. Flyers also circulated containing slogans meant to denigrate local parties, such as that Hasan Tiro (the supreme leader of GAM) had a Jewish wife and that he would sell all of Aceh’s natural resources to foreigners if PA won.

The five other local parties were caught in the middle, intimidated by both PA supporters who viewed PA as the only valid local party and by Indonesian nationalists who viewed all local parties as traitorous. In some locations PA supporters campaigned by spreading the word that PA was the only party that had signed the Helsinki MoU, and other local parties were therefore incapable of continuing the peace process and were stooges of Jakarta. From the other side, rumours circulated that all local parties would push for independence if elected, and that this would lead to a resumption of conflict. Several officials from a local party based on the east coast reported receiving three to four death threats per day by text message throughout the campaign period. They shared the opinion that there was no democracy in this election.

Results

Election day passed with relatively few reported incidents. However there were allegations that order and security at voting booths was poor in some areas. In areas with strong PA support it was claimed that PA supporters gathered near the booths and pressured voters, and that many polling booth officials were loyal PA supporters. In areas with low levels of support for GAM in the past, it was local parties which claimed there was intimidation towards their supporters at the booths.

‘there was no democracy at all here’

The results were counted behind schedule, and many allegations of fraud in the counting process emerged, although most were small scale. Results at the provincial and district levels showed a clear victory for the Aceh Party, which won 33 of 69 seats in Aceh’s provincial parliament, plus a majority of seats in seven of Aceh’s district parliaments (of which there are now 23 due to administrative changes since 2006). In another nine districts, PA got between 20 per cent and 36 per cent of seats, a minority but more than any other party got. The remaining seven districts were very fractured, won by national parties (PD and Golkar) but with seats split between many parties.

Aside from PA, the big winner in Aceh was Partai Demokrat (PD), the party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. PD won seven of the 13 Aceh seats in the national parliament, but also did well at the provincial and district levels, taking second place behind PA at provincial level and coming first or second in many districts.

These results show strong support for the peace process. PD got votes in areas where it did not campaign at all, with many voters seemingly voting for PD as a show of their appreciation for the peace process organised under the president’s direction. Even though presidential candidate Jusuf Kalla was also instrumental in achieving peace in Aceh, his Golkar party did not receive a windfall of support as did PD, perhaps because of ongoing distrust towards the party which was in power during many of the conflict years. While the success of the Aceh Party clearly shows this party enjoys wide support, from interviews in the field it appears that some voted for PA not because they had supported GAM’s struggle for independence in the past but more in the hopes that a PA victory was the best method of securing the peace for the future.

Local parties other than PA did not fare well. PDA (the Aceh Sovereignty Party) was the only local party other than PA to get into the provincial parliament, with a single seat. At the district level, local parties other than PA obtained far fewer seats than they had hoped. Of the total 645 seats in the 23 district parliaments, PDA got 11 seats, SIRA got seven, PBA (the Aceh Unity Party) got four, PRA (the Aceh People's Party) got two, and PAAS (the Prosperous and Safe Aceh Party) did not get any. Election regulations stipulate that local parties must get at least five per cent of seats in the provincial parliament, or five per cent of seats in half of the district parliaments, in order to be able to contest the 2014 elections. Of the six local parties, only PA exceeded this threshold, and thus the other five will not be involved in the next elections.

Female candidates did not fare well in this election in Aceh. While many women were recruited in order to meet the stipulated 30 per cent quota for each party, the majority of these candidates did not earn enough individual votes to be elected. This was related to several factors. Some of these female candidates were inexperienced politicians recruited merely to achieve the quota, and did not campaign actively. Additionally, many voters in Aceh still see men as more appropriate for leadership roles. As one male official from a (non-Islamic) national party told me: ‘the world was created for men, women cannot be leaders…women cannot think rationally for one week per month, so how could they make decisions?’

PA and PD, the two big winners, stood out amongst the other parties in that their supporters tended to vote for the party in general, not for a particular candidate. Votes for other parties tended to be cast for particular candidates rather than for the party. This is related to campaigning styles. PA deliberately emphasised party solidarity, with candidates campaigning together. Candidates of other parties usually campaigned individually and competed with each other for seats. Also, PA candidates generally lacked private wealth with which they could run individual campaigns. PD probably received mostly party votes because in many cases voters were not swayed by a particular PD candidate, but rather wanted to make a general statement of support for SBY’s role in achieving peace in Aceh.

Conflict resolution?

The election suffered from many failings, including intimidation, lack of freedom to campaign, mysterious violence, and allegations of fraud. Yet as a post-conflict election, it was not a failure. It does not seem that the final tally massively misrepresents the will of the people, and PA’s success in this election means that large-scale conflict is very unlikely to resume in the short to medium term. Former GAM supporters now have the chance to pursue their goals through the extensive power they wield in the executive and legislative branches of local government.

Several officials from a local party based on the east coast reported receiving three to four death threats per day by text message

However, challenges remain. The transition from a military movement to a political one with democratic processes reaching down to grassroots level has not yet been completed. Some PA members may have difficulty in adjusting to the challenges of legislative work, and tensions may rise if PA legislators find their policy goals thwarted by administrative procedures or by opposition within parliament.

Will the new PA legislators manage to change the way local parliaments are run, using their pro-poor stance to reduce corruption and incompetence, or will they eventually operate just like the political elites they have long criticised? Those former GAM members who won executive positions a few years ago are facing challenges of their own, with several district heads being investigated for corruption.

One of PA’s main policy goals is to struggle for full implementation of the Helsinki MoU, which they say was watered down in the Law on Governing Aceh of 2006. Their struggle to revise old laws and to produce new ones in order to do this is likely to cause significant tensions between the Aceh parliament and the national parliament, and also within the Aceh parliament itself. If these tensions can be dealt with through democratic process with good will from all sides, then democracy in Aceh will have played its role in establishing peace. ii

Blair Palmer (blair.palmer@anu.edu.au) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the Australian National University, and conducted research on conflict and elections in Aceh for a study being conducted jointly by the World Bank’s Conflict and Development Program and Syiah Kuala University’s Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies. The views in this article are those of the author rather than of the institutions conducting the study.

Inside Indonesia 97: Jul-Sep 2009