"Dar Aceh" is one of the small parties seeking to prove its presence in the region (Al Jazeera)

Jakarta -

As the date of the Indonesian elections scheduled for February 14 approaches, many are extrapolating to the electoral system that does not allow the emergence of regional, regional or ethnic parties, due to the sensitivity of this in a country that includes hundreds of nationalities, and wide religious and cultural diversity, so that the parties will not have a presence at all times. National level.

In order to license any party, it is required that it have headquarters in all of the country’s 38 regions, and branches in 75% of the governorates and cities affiliated with those regions, and in 50% of the municipalities administratively included under them.

But the situation is different in Aceh, the only province in which it is allowed to establish local parties that are active whether in its legislative councils, provinces, and cities, or to compete for executive positions, starting with the governor of the region and ending with the governors of 5 cities and the governors of 18 provinces in it.

This exception has a story in the region that is located in the far west of Indonesia, and is considered its gateway to the Indian Ocean along western Malaysia. It was called the “Threshold of Mecca” because pilgrims - in the past - used to sail from it to the Holy Land, and it comes after this region suffered from a conflict that lasted for several days. Contracts.

The Aceh Party merged with former Aceh Liberation Movement fighters after the peace agreement (Al Jazeera)

Revolution and disobedience

The "revolution" against the central government of Indonesia occurred during the reign of the province's military governor, Davut Beriah, in 1953, who was also the head of the Union of Aceh Scholars. He announced that he would secede from Indonesia to establish the state of "Islamic Indonesia" with other revolutionaries in other provinces.

This "Dar al-Islam Revolution", as it was known, was a response to former President Ahmed Sukarno's refusal to grant Aceh special rule under the application of Sharia law. After 3 years of negotiation, the disobedience in Aceh ended by granting it autonomy in 1962.

But the revolution against the Jakarta government returned again in 1976 by the “Aceh Liberation Movement,” which waged an armed conflict that had its effects on Acehnese society, seeking independence, and the region witnessed numerous military operations over a period of 28 years and 8 months.

The conflict in Aceh did not end until the tsunami occurred on December 24, 2004, leaving about 230,000 dead and missing in 14 Asian countries, of which Aceh had the largest share.

This disaster had a political extension, as the tsunami waves swept away the tensions of the conflict and paved the way for Aceh’s painful humanitarian reality for in-depth negotiations that ended with a comprehensive peace agreement signed in Finland on August 15, 2005 between the government and the Aceh Liberation Movement.

The agreement allowed the integration of former fighters from the movement into public life, the establishment of political parties, participation in the administration of the region and representation in its local councils, and granting Aceh the right to administrative arrangements and special laws for its self-government.

The peace agreement produced the Aceh Administration Law of 2006, which allows the establishment of local parties and the nomination of independents, whose presence is limited to the region. About 20 parties were founded in the region during the past two decades, but only 6 of them exist, the first of which is the Aceh People’s Solidarity and Freedom Party “Sira”, which had an awareness-raising presence before. Tsunami in a popular movement demanding self-determination for the people of Aceh in 1999.

Saiful Al-Akmal sees the possibility of benefiting from the experience of political integration of fighters in Aceh (Al-Jazeera)

Many stages

After the end of the conflict, in 2007, former fighters of the Aceh Liberation Movement founded the “Aceh Party” and won 33 seats in the regional legislative council in the 2009 elections, then its seats fell to 29 and then 18 in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

This former fighting group is no longer united, but in 2011 the Aceh Nationalist Party emerged from its fold, which won a small number of seats in the last two election rounds.

There are 3 other parties: “Dar Aceh”, the Unified Aceh Generation “Obedience and Piety”, and the most recent appearance is the Justice and Welfare Party “Bas Aceh”, which was founded in 2021 after the meeting of a large number of scholars of the region and their disciples from religious institutes, and will enter the electoral test next week for the first time.

Saiful Al-Akmal, a professor at the Faculty of Education, Raniri State Islamic University in Banda Aceh, says that local political parties have gone through many stages, from their concentration around one party, Aceh, and achieving an overwhelming victory in many regions in the first elections, to a decline in the votes they received. And the emergence of other parties competing with him.

Al-Akmal told Al Jazeera Net that local parties in Aceh complain of weak party work skills, and in light of societal changes, they found themselves in an alliance with national parties - operating at the level of all regions of the country - as they cannot nominate representatives in the central parliament in Jakarta, which makes them forced to pay some votes. Its figures are on national party lists.

He added that a number of Aceh parties have emerged from the religious, secular, and educational sectors - from non-former combatants - in the region, but they are facing difficulty in remaining strong in the political arena.

Despite all this, Al-Akmal says that the political transformation in the region has succeeded in integrating former fighters into parliamentary work and the leadership and local administration of the provinces of the region, with their participation in 3 previous elections, and they are preparing to go through the experience for the fourth time, considering the experience positive as it has opened many options to the people of Aceh.

Reda Idriya expects the national parties to advance and compete with the local parties in Aceh (Al Jazeera)

contrast

As for the discourse of politicians in Aceh, it is also changing, in Al-Akmal’s view, and is gradually moving away from the context and narrative of the conflict and the application of the peace agreement to practical solutions to people’s daily suffering.

The difference appeared during two decades of political practice, given the alliances with the national parties in Jakarta and benefiting from them, and the return to presence in the local political arena.

These parties have begun to compete with local parties for executive and legislative positions in the region, due to their financial, institutional and administrative strength, in addition to the weakness of political education and communication in Aceh among a group of local party activists.

Al-Akmal said that local parties need time to mature politically, strengthen institutionally, and have a stable societal presence and impact.

He believes that the experience of the political settlement in Aceh is positive in terms of ending the conflict and expanding the circle of political participation, and it can be useful in formulating a settlement for other conflicts, such as the conflict taking place in the far eastern provinces of Papua, and resolving the issue that has been tense there for decades.

As for Reda Idriya, a professor at the Faculty of Administrative Sciences and Government Administration, Raniri University in the city of Banda Aceh, he told Al Jazeera Net that the citizens in the region had great hope in the local parties, but with the passage of time a feeling prevails that there is no difference between them and the practices of the other national parties that they have known. .

He added that voter confidence declined, and this was reflected in a decline in the share of local parties in the legislative councils over the course of three electoral elections.

Idriya said that the national parties began to compete strongly with the local ones, especially with the change in the interests of the Acehnese voter, as the local nationalist discourse was no longer influential, and the citizen in Aceh began to resemble other citizens of other regions: in the concerns of daily life, and issues of education, health, and well-being.

This came in the context of a decline in confidence in the performance of some of Aceh's former leaders, he said, with them not providing a distinct model from their predecessors, which leads Idriya to expect the progress of the national parties and the decline of the local parties in the region in next week's elections.

Source: Al Jazeera