Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) supporters attended the party’s campaign rally in Banda Aceh on April 1. European Pressphoto Agency
Wall Street Journal – JAKARTA, Indonesia–Indonesia’s Aceh province has seen a spate of violence in the run-up to nationwide legislative elections on April 9. The area in north Sumatra was once the scene of a decades-long separatist conflict and only achieved peace in 2005, after the two sides were brought together following the devastation wrought by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Some security analysts say the violence–marked by shootings, vandalism and assault–indicates the depth of rivalry between the different rebel factions that once fought for independence against Indonesian troops and are now vying for control of the resource-rich province.
A recent report from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict looks at Aceh’s elections and outlines various scenarios based on their outcome.
While the provincial vote doesn’t count for much at the national level, it will have deeper implications for the way Indonesia’s democracy shapes up down the road and could provide an image boost to presidential contender Prabowo Subianto, it says.
Aceh earned special autonomy as part of the 2005 peace deal, making it the only province in the country that allows local parties to form and run in elections. One of those parties is Partai Aceh, which is controlled by past leaders of the Free Aceh Movement, a rebel group that fought government forces for decades in an attempt to achieve independence.
The party is largely credited with having brought peace to the long-fraught area and controls the lion’s share of power in the local parliament.
The party’s main rival, Partai Nasional Aceh, is attempting to secure enough seats in the provincial parliament to form a bloc that would allow it to put a check on Partai Aceh’s powers, something the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict calls the “best” outcome but also “the least likely, since it has neither the machine nor the resources to get out the vote.”
Sidney Jones, the institute’s director, says a sweeping win for Partai Aceh would indicate “how much the peace agreement and the advent of local parties has solidified control of a group that is virtually unshakeable from its position.”
Its grip on the province has made national leaders reluctant to challenge it, she says, despite concerns about a lack of accountability and recent problematic legislation. In early February, for example, the provincial government approved a bylaw that requires everyone in the province to follow Islamic law regardless of religion. The province is the only one in Indonesia that applies strict Islamic or Sharia law, but until the latest bylaw was passed that only applied to Muslims.
The question now is whether a strong show of support for Partai Aceh in this election would make a new government similarly unwilling to challenge it, Ms. Jones says.
Much of that depends on how the presidential elections later this year pan out. If Partai Aceh wins big, it would help Mr. Subianto and his Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), which formed an unlikely alliance with Partai Aceh last year.
While local parties cannot field candidates for national office, they can ally with national parties to win seats in the national House of Representatives. In the last election, Partai Aceh teamed up with current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party.
The Gerindra-Partai Aceh pairing has struck many as strange since Mr. Subianto is the former son-in-law of past president Suharto and an ex-military commander. That means “someone who could be seen to be a military representative is also allied with the former guerillas,” says Ms. Jones.
The alliance could help Gerindra win a few seats in the House, which would boost Mr. Subianto’s chances of contesting the presidency, since his party needs to win at least 20% of the overall vote to put his name on the presidential ballot. But what’s more important, analysts say, is what a win in Aceh could do for his image and electability.
“What happens in Aceh will say volumes about what is going on in Indonesia,” Shane Barter, a professor of comparative politics at Soka University in California, said in an email. “If Aceh can be brought into Prabowo’s network, then anywhere can.”
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