Uma Politics Uma Politics an Ethnography of Democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006
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Uma Uma Politics An ethnography of democratization in Politics West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006 Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is an often unpredictable process. This book concentrates on that political transformation in An ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia An ethnography of democratization in West one of Indonesia’s most ‘traditional’ islands, Sumba. Why does democratization create such great opportunities for local politicians with their private agenda’s? Why does regional autonomy, as part of the national democratization program, promote socio-economic inequality in West Sumba? This book is written out of an intimate knowledge of Sumba’s social groupings, from farmers through Chinese shopkeepers and government officials. Jacqueline Vel lived in Sumba as a development worker for six years in the 1980s and has made frequent return visits for further research since then. She studied every stage of ‘transition to democracy’ in the local context, thus creating this ethnography of democratization. The book analyses themes apparent in a series of chronological events that occurred over a period of twenty years (1986-2006): village level politics under the New Order, political violence as the New Order’s authority crashed in 1998, and the leadership styles that developed amidst the new electoral democracy that followed. Jacqueline Vel illustrates her analysis with biographies of main political actors and ethnographic vignettes depicting their styles and strategies. Sumbanese politics are analysed as a process of negotiating private interests and reciprocal obligations of the leaders and their personal cliques, rather than viewing them only through the lens of political parties or programmes they propagate. Uma Politics is the sequel of Vel’s dissertation The Uma Economy, and the title refers to the uniquely Sumbanese type of network politics. The author brings together tradition with the modern economy, government and politics into an evolving, dynamic concept of political culture. Jacqueline Vel is researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute of law, governance and Uma Politics development at Leiden University. Part of the research for this book was for the Modern Indonesia Project of KITLV in Leiden and sponsored by a research fellowship of the Vel J.A.C. IIAS. She is currently involved in research on land law, access to justice, and socio-legal An ethnography of aspects of biofuel production in Indonesia. democratization in ISBN 978-90-6718-324-6 West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006 Jacqueline A.C. Vel 9 789067 183246 UMA POLITICS VERHANDELINGEN VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 260 jacqueline a.c. vel UMA POLITICS An ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006 KITLV Press Leiden 2008 Published by: KITLV Press Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands website: www.kitlv.nl e-mail: [email protected] KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Cover: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp ISBN 978 90 6718 324 6 © 2008 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xv I Introduction 1 Sumbanese election campaign 1 Making democracy work 3 Outline and arguments 6 Sumba in Indonesian context 7 Neo-patrimonialism in a democratic state 7 Widening world of the local elite 10 State, power and the forms of capital 10 Tradition and authority 12 Space and time 13 Individuals and networks 14 Political class 16 Uma economy and Uma politics 18 II Sumba and the state 21 Sumba: geography and subsistence 23 Population 28 History of state formation on Sumba 30 State and Sumbanese Christianity 35 State as career: Umbu Djima and the forms of capital 41 The state as bureaucratic procedures 47 The state as economic sector 49 Social cleavage 51 III Tradition, leadership and power 55 Traditional cultural capital 56 Ethnicity and traditional political organization 60 Traditional leadership 62 Legitimacy and adat 64 Traditional concepts of power 67 Power resources 70 Conclusions 72 Village 74 vi Contents IV Legal pluralism and village politics 81 Village politics 83 Legal pluralism 85 Forms of capital 87 Adat in Lawonda 91 The state in the village 93 The Christian church in Lawonda 95 The development organisation 97 Umbu Hapi versus Pak Vincent 100 Clash of paradigms or legal pluralism 106 Village justice in West Sumba in 2004 108 V Regime change and democratization 113 Democracy and constitutional liberalism 114 Demands of Reformasi 116 Changing local regime 117 Uncertainty after May 1998 118 Capital town 121 VI Violence in Waikabubak 125 Explaining communal violence 127 Preparation: master narratives, previous antagonisms and crisis discourse 129 Narrative one: clan rivalries 129 Narrative two: violence, warfare and violent rituals in West Sumba 130 Narrative three: local political rivalry 132 Narrative four: national crisis discourse 133 Trigger incident 135 Transformation into communal conflict 136 Elevation into a wider discourse 137 The aftermath 138 Explanation and interpretation 140 Explanation one: criminal incident 140 Explanation two: part of local elite’s political struggle 141 Explanation three: part of long series of endemic riots 142 Waikabubak as case of ‘post-Suharto violence in Indonesia’ 143 Consequences for the 1999 bupati elections 146 VII Growing political public 149 International development aid for political reform 150 Civil society on Sumba 152 Adat revival 156 In touch with the rest of the world 158 Radio and newspapers 161 Voices of the political public 163 Contents vii Small town 166 VIII Creating a new district 171 Decentralisation and pemekaran 171 Economic stakes 174 Historical arguments for pemekeran 175 Cultural and religious arguments 180 Rhetoric and theatre 181 Social forces behind pemekaran 185 Overseas Sumbanese 185 Local campaign leaders 189 Well-educated but unemployed youths 190 Women 191 Campaigning for Central Sumba 191 Conclusions 200 IX Elections 201 Local election experience 201 Democratic elections in 1999 203 Parliament elections in 2004 204 Presidential elections 211 Pilkada 212 West Sumba’s pilkada candidates 214 Umbu Bintang: the performing prince 219 Election rally in Kabunduk, Central Sumba 221 Symbols, rhetoric and ‘the angry man’ 225 Pote Leba: the intellectual bureaucrat 227 Golkar, bureaucrats and businessmen 229 The result 232 Conclusion 234 X Conclusions 237 The local context 238 Capital and leadership 240 Political identity 242 Political class, political public and the tani class 243 Democratization and Uma politics 246 Glossary 249 Abbreviations and acronyms 253 Annexes 255 Bibliography 257 Index 271 Introduction Preface Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is more than ‘just’ the introduction of a series of policy measures or new laws in countries previously ruled by authoritarian regimes. Instead, it is a lengthy, contextual- ized and often unpredictable process in which elements of democratic regime according to plan or theory articulate with long-established patterns of gov- ernance and politics in a specific society. This book describes that process in West Sumba, in Eastern Indonesia and asks the central question of how local leaders exploit the opportunities created by changes in the national political context and how these changes are reflected in the specific stylistic nature of Sumbanese politics. In Indonesia, on 21 May 1998 President Suharto stepped down from office, marking the start of a new period in Indonesian history in which the country would be transformed quickly into a democracy. Studies that describe the political history of this period show a sequence of the most salient features of what was first called ‘a transition to democracy’. The first studies centred on the financial crisis in 1998 and Reformasi (Budiman, Hatley and Kingsbury 1999) and concentrated on the end of the New Order and hopes for the future. The reorganization of the regime caused uncertainty regarding not only who would be in charge nationally, but also in each region or district. Governors and district heads, unsure of support from the centre and local forces, used their new freedoms of speech and organization to voice their interests and griev- ances. Moreover, the economic crisis had impoverished many families and had forced the state to restrict the number of civil servants, resulting in intensified job competition and changes in the rules governing that competition. The first three years after the demise of the New Order sadly became a period of widespread violence in Indonesia. Many instances of ‘small town wars’ (Van Klinken 2007) were described by researchers who had engaged in long-term studies of particular areas and now witnessed peaceful coexistence transform into inter-group violence. One general conclusion of these col- lected studies is that local elite had a large role in producing the violence and mobilized mass support by emphasizing religion and ethnicity. This type of political violence occurred in West Sumba’s capital town Waikabubak in x Preface November 1998. There, Christians fought each other