http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/11/05/an-acehnese-view-new-government.html
An Acehnese view on the new government M. N. Djuli , Banda Aceh | Thu, 11/05/2009 11:53 AM | Opinion The re-election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and his decision to drop Jusuf Kalla (JK) as his vice president and pick Boediono instead makes Indonesian power politics, to use the superpower analogy, unipolar. Whether this will be a negative or positive development for Aceh will be measured by the commitment of the new government in realizing its promises as stipulated in the Helsinki Agreement. Although it doesn't seem to be too relevant now to debate who was responsible for achieving peace in Aceh, in fact, its true champion was the people of Aceh. Both SBY and JK as a team did, of course, hold the key, without which the peace in Aceh that we all are enjoying today would not have been possible. Now that their dream team is no more, what next for the Acehnese? JK has openly expressed his disappointment in the Acehnese for giving over 90 percent of their votes to SBY, prompting him to decry the Acehnese as "ungrateful", forgetting maybe that in politics there is no such thing as gratitude, there being only calculated advantages and disadvantages. Besides, why should the Acehnese be grateful to any of the national leaders, who were the source of their misery in the first place? It is the duty of these leaders to rectify the wrongs committed either by them or by their predecessors that caused unparalleled suffering to the people of Aceh. In overwhelmingly placing their trust in SBY, the Acehnese are in fact showing their political maturity, knowing how to calculate advantages and disadvantages; in other words, in "playing smart". Their votes were too few in number to have any real effect on the result of the election. SBY would have won even without the Acehnese votes. But the votes do have a tremendous effect on SBY's personal prestige as a man of peace, a reformed general. The Acehnese endorsement gave SBY an additional feather in his cap, an acknowledgement by those on whom he had once unleashed 50,000 troops to subdue. Will they be proved right? A handful of representatives in the House of Representatives (not all from the President's Democratic Party), and one Acehnese as a Cabinet member who is in charge of state-owned companies will not have much weight in policy making. Demanding "payback" from SBY for their overwhelming support in the election will not make sense either. In the final analysis, the Acehnese can only base their bet on their belief that SBY is smart enough to realize that maintaining and developing peace in Aceh is in the interest of the Republic itself. SBY, and thus the central government, should realize that the signing of the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was a great victory for the Republic. The peace agreement was signed after long and hard negotiations, between equals, on international soil, openly witnessed by the world community. For the first time in history, the Acehnese have stated in clear and unequivocal terms that Aceh is part of the NKRI. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM), even if not officially disbanded, is fading away, its armed wing dismantled, its weapons destroyed, its members dispersed willingly into civil society as ordinary citizens of the Republic, its leaders becoming government officials, politicians and businessmen. Indeed, one side of the opposing parties in the Helsinki peace negotiations has voluntarily lowered itself to be part of the other upon the signing of the MoU. The GAM, as officially certified by the AMM, has fulfilled all its obligations stipulated in the MoU. Although there is no longer any possible threat whatsoever coming from the GAM, and thus any real pressure it could exert on the central government, it is now the turn of the government of the Republic to fulfill its part of the bargain. The central government needs to make sure that the future generation will not regret the current Aceh population's decision to sign a peace agreement with the central government, as my generation questioned the legitimacy of the agreement made by my father's generation that ended the DI/TII rebellion. Today, four years after its signing, out of the 13 laws required to implement the clauses of the Helsinki MoU, only two, i.e. on the holding of the elections and the formation of local parties, have been realized. Many other crucial issues are still pending, such as the formation of the Human Rights Court (Article 2.2), the Joint Claims Settlement Commission (Article 3.2.6), and the enactment of the law to govern economic matters (the entire Article 1.3). The law on the national TRC, which was passed by the House (DPR) in 2006, was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (MK), and has still not been reintroduced to parliament, resulting in the postponement of the formation of a local TRC as stipulated in the Article 2.3 of the MoU. Even one of the easiest matters to implement, that would cost the central government next to nothing but be very important for Aceh, the facility to issue visas on arrival, is not yet in place at the new and gleaming international airport of Sultan Iskandar Muda in Banda Aceh, despite the agreements given by the President that an Immigration Office would be opened at the airport. The central government, by delaying the full implementation of all the clauses of the MoU, is not only endangering the peace process in Aceh, but risking wasting the great victory it achieved in Helsinki. It is lowering the image of the nation in the eyes of the world, not only as an emerging democracy and an open and just society, but also as a model in terms of conflict resolution and post-conflict management. Ahtisaari may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but it is up to Gen. (ret.) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to grab the title of a real man of peace, the President of a Republic that all Indonesians can be proud of, so that we Acehnese can finally say, "we got it right this time". The writer is chairman of the Aceh Peace Reintegration Board (BRA). This is a personal opinion.
