CHAPTER IV

OPPORTUNISTIC SUBALTERN’S NEGOTIATIONS DURING THE NEW ORDER ERA (1974-1998) AND DURING THE (1998-REFORMASI ERA (1998—2006)

What happened in West Kalimantan from early 1998 to 2006 was a distorted mirror image of what happened in Jakarta from early 1997 to 2004 (the return of the former government party Golkar, or at least its pro-development/anti-poor policies, to national politics). The old power, conveniently setting up scapegoats and places to hide, returned slowly and inconspicuously to the political theater. On the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI, or Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) anniversary on 5 October 1999, its Supreme Commander General Wiranto, a protégé of former president Suharto, published a book that outlined the new, formal policy of the Armed Forces (entitled “ABRI Abad XXI: Redefinisi, Reposisi, dan Reaktualisasi Peran ABRI dalam Kehidupan Bangsa” or Indonesian Armed Forces 21st Century: Redefinition, Reposition, and Re-actualization of its Role in the Nation’s Life). Two of the most important changes heralded by the book were first, a new commitment by the Armed Forces (changed from ABRI to TNI, or Tentara Nasional Indonesia, Indonesian National Soldier) to detach itself from politics, political parties and general elections and second, the eradication of some suppressive agencies related to civic rules and liberties1.

1 Despite claims of its demise when the Berlin Wall was dismantled in 1989, the Cold War had always been the most influential factor within the Indonesian Armed Forces’ doctrines. At the “end of the Cold War” in 1989, the Indonesia Armed Forces invoked a doctrine related to the kewaspadaan (a rather paranoid sense of danger) to counter the incoming openness (glastnost) in Eastern Europe. For the next few years and into the 1990s, this doctrine stated that special vigilance would be needed to guard against the infiltration of foreign values, especially communism and liberalism, into Indonesian life (Honna 2001: 62-63). Therefore, the internal security threat in the early 1990s the document concluded would be in the form of a “new-style communism” that might infiltrate the government and society. On 25 September 1998, the military-backed Habibie government (June 1998-Nov 1999) stated in

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Following a short introduction, this chapter identifies some important landmarks in: (1) the creation and perpetuation of the subalternity of local indigenous and immigrant groups, (2) the subaltern groups’ negotiations (in economic and politics) during the Suharto regime in West Kalimantan, (3) the specific activities of the Pancur Kasih Foundation as a spearheading subaltern movement in a growing civil society, (4) the ecological consequences of the direct rule method imposed by Suharto regime (1967-1998) and used as the pretext for larger scale action within civil society and (5) the civil society of West Kalimantan after the collapse of the Suharto regime (1998-2006). The legacy of the oppressive system run for three decades under General Suharto still lingers on. The main subaltern group throughout this time has been the Dayaks, who are united either through their customary communities or their membership in schools, organizations or other groups under the aegis of Pancur Kasih Foundation. After 1999, however, the historically docile Malays of Sambas district learned violent tactics from the Dayaks and joined the anti-Madurese violence. This outbreak triggered a defensive reaction from the palace-related Malay groups in Pontianak, who regrouped themselves into a United Malay Group with many organizational wings. The celebrated “reformasi” era suddenly brought fresh impetus to the old demands to turn the centralized Republic system into a more federalized republic, in which the provinces, oppressed for long time, would be given greater autonomy to manage their own respective jurisdiction. Despite the Armed Forces’ new commitment to reform some of its suppressive agencies, it still had plans to increase the number of KODAMs (Komando Daerah Militer) at its Regional Military Command Headquarters at both the provincial and regional level (under two-star generals) from 11 in late 1999, to 17 in 2006 (Yulianto 2002: 356). This meant that the Armed Forces still had a crucial duty to maintain the integrity of the centralized system of a republic, vis-à-vis the clamoring demands for a united republic with a federal system.

Thus, what happened immediately after the suppressive system was suddenly toppled in May 1998 was a series of struggles between two forces that between them

Republika, a Habibie-controlled newspaper, that the Forum Kota (an alliance of protesting students from 37 universities) was a communist-oriented movement.

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represented two diametrically opposed tendencies in the Fergusonian state and society paradigm: the central government, backed by the military and bureaucracy ranks clinging to a centralized governance system, on the one hand, against the provincial bureaucracies, representing populations yearning for more “freedom” and thus dreaming about a more decentralized governance system, on the other. This is not to say that the struggles were always fully oppositional. Sometimes, the provincial bureaucrats needed authority from the central government decision making structure, in order to take over some of the revenue-collecting licensing process for example, in the forestry sectors (logging, plantation development, or mining). The most ironic case in the struggle between the central government and the provincial bureaucracies took place when the former, in a move obviously made to calm the demands for “local autonomy”, granted rights to the latter (governors, or Gubernur and district leaders, or Bupati) to give forest licenses through a Government Regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah No. 6 of 1999, about Rights to Manage Forests or HPH and Rights to Extract Forest Products or HPHH) (Erma S. Ranik 2002a: 31).

Apparently unable to wait any longer to “unleash” their new powers to grant forest licenses and dig for more sources of revenues authorized by the Minister of Forestry, the district leaders (allowed to issue forest concessionaires for forests sized smaller than 100 ha to individuals, farmer associations or cooperatives) in West Kalimantan rushed to issue around 300 of such concessions, creating confusion due to the overlapping boundaries of the concessionaire areas2. Having enjoyed these powers for around two years from 1999 to 2002, the provincial bureaucracies were then

2 In 1998, through the Ministerial Decision No. 677/Kpts-II/1998, the Minister of Forestry and Plantation issued the rights for the still unclearly defined “forest communities” to manage what the decision termed Hutan Kemasyarakatan (Community Forests), as long as these communities took the form of “cooperatives”. Adding to the confusion these “forest communities,” inter alia, were suddenly confronted by and overlapped with the areas under the jurisdiction of the newer Government Regulation No. 6 of 1999. The Governor of West Kalimantan, Maj. Gen. Aspar Aswin, however, commented lightly on March 2002 (Erma S. Ranik 2002a: 33) that the protests were normal. “If those district leaders rejected [the Minister’s Letter of Decision No. 541/Kpts-II/2002] they must deal directly with central government. We at the province have only accommodated the communication between central government and district leaders so far.”

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dumbfounded when the central government suddenly revoked these rights for the district leaders, through a Decree by the Minister of Forestry (Surat Keputusan or Letter of Decision of Minister of Forestry No. 541/Kpts-II/2002). The ensuing protests from the district leaders in West Kalimantan (notably the “forested” districts of Ketapang and Kapuas Hulu) were merely symbolic because in the forests, forest extraction under the district leader-issued forest concessions went on unhindered, despite its revocation by the Minister of Forestry.

At a different level of struggle, the long-suppressed and hidden friction between the state’s “development” (represented by the Madurese, the most aggressive migrant laborers from East Java) and the quietly grumbling locals (represented by the presumably docile Malays) reached a new and higher level. If previously the ethnic riots had taken place mostly between the allegedly ferocious Dayaks and the aggressive Madurese, then this time hardly a year after the fall of the suppressive regime of General Suharto, the unexpected actors among the Malay group took their deadly turn. This event was important because it took the inter-related debates at the national level down to the provincial level: between supporters of the post-Suharto state de-militarization and those who wished for increased militarization to counter “globalization”; between supporters of a federalized republic and believers in a unified republic and also; between pro-local autonomy groups and pro-centralized rule supporters3.

3 On 25 March 1999 the Armed Forces Commander Gen. Wiranto visited the city of Sambas to see the riots and stated that the areas where the riots took place would not be declared Military Operation Areas (Daerah Operasi Militer), unless the anti- Madurese riots turned into anti-Republic Indonesia separatist movements (Kompas 26 March 1999). Bambang W. Suharto (no family relation to the former president Suharto), a member of National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM), triggered a new debate on a sensitive issue vis-à-vis the clamorous demands for post- New Order de-militarization. In April 1999, Bambang W. Suharto offered a solution to overcome the ethnic conflicts through the establishment of a new KODAM (Regional Military Command Headquarter, under a two-star general) in West Kalimantan (Tri Wahyu 1999: 16). (The status of the Military Command Headquarters in West Kalimantan was made KOREM, or Military Resort Command Headquarter on 1 May 1985, on the eve of the crises related to low oil prices and through a decision by the then Armed Forces Commander, L.B. Moerdani. This

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This chapter thus proposes that the Dayaks’ traditional links with external agencies, such as the Church and the colonialists, were the “markers” for the differences between this indigenous group and the Malay peasantry, as studied by Scott (1985: 29) and whom he claims, were the instigators of a “prosaic but constant struggle”. This fact can thus be attributed to the higher speed with which the Dayaks “learned” the negotiation ropes, compared to that of the Malays. These links with the external agencies allowed the Dayaks to utilize more than just a “prosaic” struggle. This chapter also lays the seed for an argument for further expansion of Tambiah’s concepts of the focalization and transvaluation of local incidents into less context- bound causes or interests. On the contrary, certain cultural traits of the settler Madurese and the native Dayaks just happened to be explosively incompatible. The Madurese’ negative-retaliatory communal mechanism (communal attempts to avoid justice perpetrated by a clan member) and the Dayaks’ positive-retaliatory communal mechanism (a culturally acknowledged retaliation, for the unheeded cultural demands from a Dayak victim’s blood relatives in an extended blood lineage) merged into a deadly mixture that guaranteed an explosive cultural chain reaction of violence. This deadly mixture was unfortunately ignored (and even manipulated to some extent), by both the colonial and the post-colonial regimes (notably the Suharto-led New Order) and as long as it involved only limited, minority actors: the Madurese settlers as a numerical minority, and the native Dayaks as a political minority.

4.1 Creation and Perpetuation of Subalternity as Political Identities in a Post- Colonial Society

This section introduces the theoretical background for the common process of subalternization that has taken place in most of the post-colonial societies. Subaltern studies appeared as a critique to the European representations of non-European ‘others’-- of the control of the discourses, the production of professional canons for the representations of the other, and the epistemological and ethical ambiguities from the position of the ethnographic observer (O’Hanlon 2000: 72-73). The series of

brought together all the Military Command Headquarters of the four provinces in Kalimantan into KODAM VI Tanjungpura.)

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subaltern studies are a part of the project aimed at restoring the ‘suppressed’ histories of women, non-whites, non-Europeans, as well as the subordinates of colonial [South] Asia. For some reasons, the creation of subaltern groups has occurred in parallel with the colonial creation of political identities, which in itself has been intertwined with cultural, economic and political processes. From the beginning, the western colonial project tried to wipe clean the ‘civilization slate’, in order to introduce western norms through western law. This section therefore reveals the specific process of peasantization (as well as de-peasantization) in the former colonies, where the colonial interventions built ‘civilizational projects’ with unintended consequences.

The shift from direct to indirect rule marked the first major retreat from the shared civilization project (Mamdani 2001: 24). Instead of forcing a single legal universe of direct rule, indirect rule constituted separate legal universes. In addition to a racial separation in civil law between the natives and the non-natives (under direct rule), indirect rule divided the natives into separate groups and governed each through a different set of “customary laws.” The political legacy of colonialist indirect-rule was a bifurcated state, civic and ethnic, with the former governed through civil law and the latter through customary law (Mamdani 2001: 28). This legacy went beyond legal pluralism to a set of institutionally entrenched discriminations—civil law was racialized and customary law ethnicized. The two-fold discrimination became the basis of a distinction between two types of citizenship in the post-colonial period: civic and ethnic.

If civic citizenship is a consequence of membership of the central state with rights mainly individual and located in the political and civil domain, ethnic citizenship is a result of membership in the native authority. Ethnic citizenship is the source of a different category of rights, mainly social and economic. Ethnic citizenship not only evokes a cultural difference, but also brings material consequences. A civic citizen may acquire land or other material goods only through a market transaction that is, by purchasing it. However, an ethnic citizen can claim land as a “customary” right, a kin-based claim that is a consequence of membership of an ethnic group. The history of colonialism in Africa, however, has shown that this

148 differentiation was further refined for ecological reasons. The poverty among the native and non-natives, caused by overgrazing and soil erosion, land fragmentation and declining crop yields (Mamdani 1996: 190) necessitated a dramatic shift in [South African] government policy. To increase the carrying capacity of the land reserves was to accelerate the internal differentiation between “full-time peasant farmers” and those who combined farming with migrant remittances. (This internal differentiation occurred indirectly in the study sites of this dissertation, through the commercialization of “customary” land after a road was built between the Dayak villages.)

Through the Betterment Act of 1939, this shift in government policy was run through three key programs: villagization, conservation and privatization (Mamdani 1996: 191). Villagization was designed to separate migrants from full-time farmers and to herd the former into rural dormitory villages, while keeping the latter on farms. Using conservation, the state took charge of resource allocation and use; land was set aside for afforestation and vital sources defined for certain usages and cattle culling took place for balanced use of grazing lands. These measures hurt the rural poor who lacked the capacity to forgo access to resources in the short run, in the interest of conservation in the long run. With forests and bushes no longer available for them, the marginal peasantry moved from their customary holdings to plots on new trust land. The move from customary to modern plots and methods was in turn an effort to reorganize their reserves through privatization (Mamdani 1996: 191).

This process, though with some ramifications, also took place in the West Kalimantan villages studied (Lingga and Pancaroba). Settlers from the barren islet of Madura arrived in Lingga village after the mid 1930s and were allocated land by the colonial government, on the southern side of the Ambawang River. When their numbers grew, these settlers needed more land and so they either invaded the customary land of the Dayaks, who lived mainly on the northern side of the Ambawang River, or bought it from Dayak “owners.” (The invasion of Dayak customary lands by Madurese settlers provoked a limited skirmish in Pancaroba village, as shown in Chapter V.) Increasing numbers of both settlers (peasantry) and

149 sedentarized natives (tribal peasants) had decreased the size of land resources controlled by the latter, either through market-based exchange or through customary inheritance. During the time of the research in 2006-2007 the characteristics of both natives and settlers in the Dayak villages along the newly built asphalt road from Pontianak to Tayan showed a very close resemblance. Most of the native and settler households only hold a limited size of land (both rubber plots and rice plots) and this has forced them to seek non-agricultural remittances somewhere else (such as through migrant labor, urban employment and overseas work).

The upsurge of jargon associated with civil society in West Kalimantan before and after the fall of Suharto in 1998 (although rather obscured by the increasing activities of the Catholic Church, which hardly mentions civil society) took place in Dayak villages more as a symbol of the restoration of rights, which were mostly cultural and economic but also less obviously political, of the ‘dispossessed’ or the subalternized groups. Although the idea of the self-constituting, self-determining individuals came into full expression during the European’s eighteenth century, as Foucault has argued, the culmination of the crucial process in the evolution of the modern state (separation of ‘civil society’ from the state) only visibly appeared rather lately in 1998 in West Kalimantan. Thus created was the sphere of private interests, such as the family, the church, the institutions of learning, trade unions, the media and cultural life and also civic institutions, where the individual may exercise rights and liberties free from state authority and which receive legitimacy from their respect of those rights and liberties (O’Hanlon 2000: 107).

The parallel of this process was the creation of ‘others’ by the Siamese rulers in the Thai case, as explained by Thongchai Winichakul (2000: 47-49) and through the creation of chao bannok (people of the outer villages of Bangkok) and chao pa (people of the forest). The chao bannok were people of whatever race or language who, according to the traditional (Siamese) imperial discourse, begged to live ‘under the shadow of protection of the enlightened Siamese overlord’. Data about them was later put on charts and tables, into exhibitions and statistical yearbooks. The landscape, nature and village lives in the eyes of the modernizing rulers were valued

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in terms of their productivity and economic potential. The space of chao bannok became administratively domesticated and economically exploitable as a natural and human resource. Chao pa or the ‘Wild People’ seemed to be ‘marginal subjects’ in every sense of the word. They received no further attention from the Bangkok rulers, as they were people who refused civilization and whom the rulers thought not worthy of trying ‘to care and protect’. As a result these Chao Pa were left alone, constituting a polar opposite to civilization. The parallel process of subjugating the Dayaks of West Kalimantan as ‘uncivilized’ forest people brought a rather different series of consequences.

Shortly after the Suharto-led New Order reigned fully in West Kalimantan in 1974, it grossly ignored incorporating the roles of the Dayaks into the development of the province. The alleged role of the Dayak warriors in the forcible eviction of the hinterland Chinese communities onto the coastal cities of West Kalimantan, an eviction designed to reduce these communities’ potential to support an allegedly Chinese-instigated “rebellion”, was rewarded simply with baubles and trinkets in the form of military honorary ranks and medals. The important political leaders who formerly led the Dayak parties were forcibly absorbed, either into the nationalist parties or the religious parties. The two notable Dayak leaders by the name of Oevang Oeray and F.C. Palaoensuka were transferred to the Jakarta-based offices of government units (in the case of the former) and also to parliament (in the case of the latter) and so away from the people they led directly before. Having lost their importance in terms of the political, economic, cultural and social realms under the reign of the New Order since 1974, the Dayaks were forced to accept their minor role in the province’s extractive development. Their traditional “leader” the Catholic Church thus began to resist the pressures over its rank and file by the New Order and designed to increase the proselytization of the Dayaks without proper support from external sources, which were controlled tightly by the New Order’s henchmen.

An inability to directly challenge the state led the Church to utilize a series of rather indirect activities, through its ‘permissible’ and traditional campaigns such as building schools and churches and forming Credit Unions. As the economic situation

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of the New Order had been affected by the price of oil (the Order’s most precious product), the Church also acted according to the volatile oil prices. Whenever low prices hit the government hard, the space created for the Church’s increasingly aggressive activities also grew. The most prominent representative of the ‘hard time’ for the Suharto-led government was the increasingly stronger and popular civil society after the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, which incidentally took place when the oil prices hit the bottom.

4.2 Opportunistic Negotiations Facilitated by External Agencies

The scattered Dayaks, led by some of their politicians who were waving primordialist banners, tried in vain to play parliamentary games and military maneuvers, no matter how indirectly they were able to challenge the state’s military might. However, some of the Dayaks (under the leadership of intellectuals and thinkers in the economic, social and cultural spheres) fared better. This section captures the negotiations of the subalternized group, mainly the Dayaks, who suffered the biggest losses in terms of their ancestral land mapped for capital-supported exploitation by Suharto’s cronies. After a rather general portrayal of the socio- economic changes at the national level, as intercepted by the Dayak indigenous group, this section provides a close-up description of the Church-supported Dayak economic, social and cultural organizations. This section also covers a rather lengthy period (1975-1996), in order to reveal how the Dayaks of West Kalimantan creatively utilized the arrival and growth of civil society. One of the most visible and experienced actors among the rank and file of West Kalimantan’s NGO’s was the Pancur Kasih Foundation. This section reiterates the activism of the Foundation (the most prominent Dayak NGO) and the heralding of civil society as the perceived end point of the Cold War in Indonesia and West Kalimantan. Because the short history of the Pancur Kasih Foundation is scattered throughout this text, this section will retell the history of the Dayak-based foundation and the economic, social and political context of its birth and growth. The first training for the founding of the Credit Union during 18-22 August 1975 was a

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spasmodic reaction by the Catholic Church against the increasing pressure of the state agencies, which were placed in a dilemma in relation to their anti-communist Cold War campaigns in West Kalimantan. On the one hand, the state agencies (military and bureaucratic) believed that to face the threat of communism among the Dayaks, the “pagan” Dayaks must hold a religion and the Church most available in the remote Dayak villages (either Catholic or Protestant) would thus provide a quick answer to this belief. On the other hand, the state agencies obviously hated the fact that the high rate of conversions among the Dayaks into Catholic or Christians, which occurred during the 1967-1974 anti-communist campaigns, meant more power to the Church as its followers grew in numbers. The quick solution to this dilemma was found through the undermining of the Church’s financial capacity, which was allegedly backed by sources from abroad. One priest of the Capuchin Order in Lingga village (interview) acknowledged that the Church had been asphyxiated by the suppressive rulings by the state bureaucracies in relation to its financial support from abroad. Thus the Capuchin Order, the second Order to come to West Kalimantan after the Jesuits4, had to find a way out of its financial constraints. The life-cycle of the Church-initiated Credit Union from 1975 to 1998, (Pancur Kasih, as it was called much later) was closely related to the life-cycle of the Suharto-led New Order (1967-1998) as outlined in Chapter III, the Oil Boom (1967- 1982), the Oil Shock (1982-1992) and the Shaking Regime (1992-1998). The Credit Union was born, so that the Church might fend off its own death at the hands of the state bureaucracy and the Credit Union was fully acknowledged as a legal institution, when that state bureaucracy regime itself died. What was good for the state was bad for the Church-initiated Credit Union. The life-cycle of the Credit Union (as a part of the whole campaign that was overtaken by the Dayaks themselves, in order to “enlighten” their own peers) was therefore set as: (1) the Fledgling Time under

4 When the Capuchin Order of the Church was granted exclusive access to West Kalimantan in 1905, the missionaries gained important momentum (Davidson 2003a: 6). Previous attempts by the Jesuits to convert the Dayaks into Christians and thus civilize the “pagan” Dayaks, who built a tiny station in Semitau (Kapuas Hulu, the ‘deepest,’ easternmost district) and later a school-church complex in Sejiram, were hampered by lack of institutional support.

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Repression (1975-1981), (2) the Injected New Blood (1981-1987), (3) the New Beginning (1987-1997) and (4) the Flourishing Era (1998-to date). After the trainers from the Credit Union Consulting Office (Biro Konsultasi Usaha Simpan Pinjam), notably Robby W. Tulus, A. Lunandi, BA and Th. Mukti Anshari had provided “motivation” training for around 100 people, priests, sisters, brothers (bruder) and teachers of the Catholic religions, the fledgling branches of the Credit Union quickly grew to 224 (30 with legal status) during the period from August 1975 to September 1977 (Frans L. Anderson 2004a: 20). The original four CU branches, with a status as “pre-Credit Union”, had been founded (in Pusat Damai, Batang Tarang, Nyarumkop and Sanggau) before the first training took place. These branches, however, died as quickly as they appeared. From 1975 to 1983 only one CU branch in Pusat Damai (CU Lantang Tipo, with a German national by the name of P. Pius Gamperle as one of its pioneers) survived. Tan Ting Ngo (70), one of the trainees of the first CU training in 1975, believed that the spawning CU branches died out because of the lack of understanding among their members about the meaning of the Credit Union movement. The state-sponsored koperasi (cooperatives) movement, which also grew at the height of the Indonesian economic achievement related to the high oil price (1974- 1982), was merely lip service by the state’s bureaucracy with respect to the state’s ideology Pancasila, in which social justice through cooperatives was one important part. The forcibly founded and nation-wide cooperatives, however, failed5 miserably and simply left a traumatic public experience regarding cooperatives. This general failure in the cooperative movement created a public suspicion towards Credit Unions, as one form of the cooperatives. In addition, the earliest Credit Union trainees in West Kalimantan were mostly members of religious services and teachers of religion, whose professions were thus unrelated to the management of a Credit Union.

5 Paulus Florus, an important member of the Credit Union Pancur Kasih, suggested that the cooperative movement failed in Indonesia for six reasons (Vincent Julipin and Margareta 1999: 8-9): (i) It was perceived as a social institution made for the poor only (ii) it broke the principles of good cooperatives by receiving state assistance (iii) it had amateurish leadership (iv) it ignored the members education (v) it was merely a façade for state political cooptation and (vi) the state never attempted to improve the quality of its management.

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Some of the pioneers of the Church-supported Credit Union movement, however, showed distinct leadership qualities (among other reasons) when resuscitating the dying movement. In 1981, shortly before the Oil Shock Phase when the oil price spiraled down from USD 35 per barrel to USD 28 in February 1986 (when it hit the bottom in August 1986, the price was USD 9.83 per barrel), the Catholic Church of West Kalimantan built its Pontianak-based social-educational wing in the form of the Foundation for Social Service, Pancur Kasih (Yayasan Karya Sosial Pancur Kasih). The Pancur Kasih Foundation’s first action was to build a school (a Sekolah Menengah Pertama, or the junior high school Fransiskus Asisi6, in Siantan). In April 1985, the Delegatus Sosialis (Delsos) of the Archbishop Pontianak initiated another round of training for Credit Union management, this time for the religious service workers and teachers, by inviting some trainers (notably H. Woeryanto and Th. Trisna Ansali) from the Badan Koordinasi Koperasi Kredit Indonesia (BK3I or Bureau for Coordination of Credit Cooperatives Indonesia). This training gave birth on 12 May 1985, to a ‘laboratory’ Credit Union that was called Khatulistiwa Bhakti (Khatulistiwa means the equator line on which Pontianak city stands; Bhakti means service) and most of all the staff of the Pancur Kasih Foundation joined as the newborn organization’s earliest members. Some figures who would become important for the Credit Union movement in this 1985 training were A.R. Mecer, Paulus Florus and Stefanus Buan (N. Yati, H. Cale, and Uju 2006: 5). The oil shock and 10 percent devaluation of the national currency the rupiah against the US dollar battered the Indonesian economy from 1983 to 1989 and, as a result, the Suharto regime lost its grip on the people-based economic activities, such as the Credit Unions. The only significant reaction of the Minister of Cooperatives (then Subiakto Tjakrawerdaja) was to reject the legal status (as a Badan Hukum, or legalized body, that is thus allowed to act as a “natural” legal subject) of Credit

6 St. Francis Assisi (1226) and St. Clare of Assisi (1253) lived what was termed as Fransiscan ideals such as living a simple life, practicing a contemplative prayer life, serving the poor and preaching the word of God. The Capuchins of Italy (since Pope Clement VII’s permission in 1528) resuscitated this ideal and spread it to the world. Today 11,000 friars (68 bishops) work in 93 countries making the Capuchins the fourth largest religious order within the Catholic Church.

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Union’s at the national level. Most of the Credit Union branches were branded as “wild cooperatives” among the state bureaucracies, although some of these bureaucrats defied the Instruction of President No. 4 of 1984 and signed off legal status to some Credit Unions at the provincial level (Vincent Julipin 1999: 10). The laboratory Credit Union Khatulistiwa Bhakti was one of the CUs that grew well. Certain of the point of no return in their Credit Union movement, the management of the CU Khatulistiwa Bhakti founded another Credit Union, Pancur Kasih, on 28 May 1987. Pushing for the development of more branches of the Credit Union in order to fulfill certain state rulings related to the legal status for their Credit Union, the Church-supported Credit Union Pancur Kasih trained more staff and encouraged the establishment of more branches. As a result, in only one year, the Pancur Kasih Foundation was able to apply to increase the legal status of its Credit Union into Badan Koordinasi Koperasi Kredit Daerah (BK3D, or Regional Bureau for Coordination of Credit Cooperatives, a member of BK3I, or Cooperatives Coordinator for National Level). Fully armed with five CUs (CUs Khatulistiwa Bhakti, Pancur Kasih, Lantang Tipo, Karya Sejahtera and Mekar Melati although the last two went bankrupt later), the Pancur Kasih Foundation finally reached one important milestone in its life-cycle, as a Bureau for Coordination of Credit Cooperatives Regional Level, on 27 November 1988 (Frans L. Anderson 2004a: 20). This episode marked a new beginning for the Credit Union movement, as Credit Union branches sprouted. Under the leadership of Drs. A.R. Mecer, in its first three years the BK3D grew its membership. A short interrupted 3-year leadership by a Church staff member by the name of Alfred Pius7 slightly disturbed the growth of Pancur Kasih Credit Union’s BK3D, when the Church insisted that the CU management was to be separated from the Church’s involvement. After these troubled three years, however, the successful previous leader of Pancur Kasih CU, Drs. A.R.

7 Alfred Pius was the Head of Bureau of Social Economic Development of the Grand Archbishop Office, Pontianak (Kepala Biro Pengembangan Sosial Ekonomi Keuskupan Agung Pontianak). On 12 May 1985, he initiated the establishment of Credit Union Khatulistiwa Bhakti. As of May 2005, this Credit Union had claimed 4,868 members and IDR 19,469,983,834 (around USD 2.16 million) worth of assets (Agustinus R.J 2005: 24).

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Mecer (refer to Appendix H for his short biography) was recalled to resume his successful leadership, which then went on until 19978. In 1992, a group of more than 200 CU branches (from many institutions outside the Pancur Kasih Foundation) collected enough capital to establish an Indonesian Central Bank-authorized Rural Bank (called the BPR PAN–Bank, or Credit Bank for People “Pancur Banua Khatulistiwa”, or Bank Perkreditan Rakyat Pancur Banua Khatulistiwa) that provided loans to small and medium sized businesses in rural communities. Restricting itself only to local lending and to locally- produced capital, the BPR PAN-Bank was theoretically safe from possible financial crises related to a global economic downturn. Through the establishment of a program called Program Pemberdayaan Ekonomi Kerakyatan Pancur Kasih (Empowerment for People Economy), the Credit Union of Pancur Kasih Foundation itself managed to build 15 branches with a value of IDR 12 billion in assets and around 17,000 members by 1995 (Bamba 2000: 54). Probably sensing the bright future of the Pancur Kasih Foundation as a means to empower the Dayaks, in 1986 a US-based NGO, World Vision International, provided scholarships for Dayak students through the management of the Pancur Kasih Foundation. However, the Pancur Kasih Foundation scholarship funds were not given directly to the students, but were kept as savings in the Credit Union under the names of the supported students’ parents. The savings were thus able to be used flexibly by the students’ families for other purposes, when the students’ needs were not a high priority (Bamba 2000: 56). This cooperation with foreign donors was just one example of the growth of a subaltern group-initiated (partly because the initiative occurred more from the Church leadership) self-help organization.

8 Frans Laten (born 12 September 1961 in Mukok subdistrict, Sanggau District) replaced Drs. A.R. Mecer to lead the Regional Bureau for Coordination of Credit Cooperatives (BK3D) in January 1997. Frans Laten resigned from his previous position as the Vice-Director of Planning in Yayasan Swadaya Dian Khatulistiwa, in which he also served as the manager of CU Khatulistiwa Bhakti. Under Laten’s leadership, the BK3D (like a “central bank for CUs) of West Kalimantan spread its wings to serve more CUs in Central, South and East Kalimantan. In August 2004, 40 CUs throughout the whole of Kalimantan grouped themselves under the BK3D Kalimantan (thus with one new name), with 112,782 members and total assets of IDR 318 billion (around USD 35.4 million) (Profil 2004: 50).

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Like other successful establishments, the Pancur Kasih Foundation expanded its wings to more branches of service. Because the majority of the targets for new memberships in the Credit Union were the Dayak rubber-tapper-cum-rice-cultivators9, the Pancur Kasih Foundation expanded its operation to reach rubber owners or tappers in West Kalimantan during 1994. Despite four instances of bankruptcy, the Rubber Farmers Cooperatives (called Koperasi Pancur Dangeri; Pancur Dangeri, which means a “fountain that never dries”) began to make significant profits in 1999 (IDR 5 million). The profits had grown to IDR 38 million by 2000 and IDR 298 million in 2002 (D. Siyok and T. Kusmiran 2003: 13). The Koperasi Pancur Dangeri targeted 218,000 rubber smallholding families (or about 1 to 1.5 million people) in West Kalimantan, who worked on 416,000 ha of rubber plantations, 5,000 ha under private companies, 12,000 ha under state plantations and the rest under smallholder ownership. (The state statistics for 2003, cited in D. Uyub et. al. 2005: 9, show 464,274 ha of rubber plantation composed of: 105,301 ha of young rubber, 275,081 ha of productive rubber and 83,892 ha of old rubber/less productive. Of this, 435,911 ha belonged to smallholders and the annual production rate was 0.732 tons per ha. Yet West Kalimantan exported 111,420 tons of rubber in 2003, with a value of USD 76,044,573). Under the leadership of Octavianus Kamusi in its early conception, the cooperative required new members to pay a membership fee of IDR 5,000 and make a compulsory saving of IDR 10,000. By August 2000, the cooperative had already opened four collection stations in two districts (Landak and Ketapang districts) and eight service stations near the collection stations (including the main service station in Pontianak), that provided sembako (sembilan bahan pokok, or nine basic household necessities including rice, wheat flour, sugar, salt, cooking oil and kerosene) for members to buy with cash from the

9 The rubber price was one of the most important factors in the planning for a Credit Union’s management in West Kalimantan. Paulus Florus, the treasurer of Pancur Kasih Credit Union (2001-2004), revealed the plan for the year 2002 as: (1) 2,151 new members (2) IDR 19.95 billion of given loans (3) total revolving capital of IDR 23.128 billion and (4) compulsory savings per member of IDR 50,000 (Margerta 2002b: 27). These targets, Florus estimated, were possible if: (1) 85 percent of members actively saved their income (2) 90 percent of the interest was paid (3) given loans monthly interest rate provided IDR 1.5 billion and (4) the price of rubber was stable, in the range IDR 3,000 to 3,500 per kg.

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rubber latex they sold. The cooperative collected rubber latex once a week from the collection stations with an average of four tons of latex per collection (Maria Goreti 2000: 19). As of December 2002, the cooperative Pancur Dangeri had claimed 2,338 members, with total assets of IDR 2.9 billion, 15 service stations and 42 staff. Given the cooperative’s relative success, its management (Stephanus Djuweng, Pancur Dangeri manager for 2002-2003) put a target for the next three years (from 2003 to 2006) of attaining a 50,000 of membership, having IDR 108 billion of asset value and controlling over around 2 percent of West Kalimantan’s total monthly rubber production. (This means 2 percent of about 28,320 tons, or 566.4 tons of the province’s monthly production and a sharp increase on the monthly collection of only 16 tons of rubber latex per month in August 2000.) If the Credit Unions and Cooperatives stood as the economic wing of the Pancur Kasih Foundation, the one that stood as its research and cultural wing was the Institut Dayakologi, which was founded on 21 May 1991 as the “Institute of Dayakology Research and Development”, or IDRD. To gain some legal status in front of threatening moves from the suppressive government, the IDRD adopted a bigger Jakarta-based NGO by the name of LP3ES10 as its “head office”. The IDRD aimed for “the revitalization and restitution of indigenous Dayak cultural heritage, through research and strategic studies, collaboration, publications and documentation, empowerment of resources and the independency of institutions” (Institut Dayakology leaflet, April 2004 created by Edi Petebang and Indramawan). In 2002, to avoid a clash with a newly passed regulation, Regulation or Undang Undang No. 16 of 2001,

10 LP3ES or Lembaga Penelitian, Pendidikan dan Penerangan Ekonomi dan Sosial (The Institute for Economic and Social Research, Education and Information) was founded by notable Indonesian economists and intellectuals on 19 August 1971, when they received endowments from the German-based Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, founded by a leading Protestant theologian and politician in Germany during the early 19th century, which campaigned for democracy through civic education.) LP3ES’ legal status came from the Decision of the Minister of Justice (No. Y.A. 5/36/12, 22 January 1973) and its registration in the Direktorat Jenderal Sosial Politik (Directorate General for Social and Political Affairs), known as one arm of the Indonesian military intelligence to screen and categorize citizens into communists and non-communists, of the Department of Interior on 26 September 1996 (http://www.lp3es.or.id/profil/proltr.htm, accessed 12 May 2007).

159 to be operational by 6 August 2002, brought in to stop the manipulation of a legal body known as the “foundations” (tax-free yayasan) as a money laundry mechanism11, the founders of the IDRD changed their name to become the Institut Dayakologi, or ID and also changed the organizations legal status to become perkumpulan, instead of yayasan.) Institut Dayakologi’s most important weapon for publication was the monthly magazine, Kalimantan Review (after 1997; it had previously been biannual), which was printed to disseminate the “wisdom of the indigenous Dayak people and information on the problems they are facing; provide a forum for mutual learning and empowerment, encourage the growth of critical culture and; promote social- reconciliation in Kalimantan” (Institut Dayakologi leaflet, April 2004 created by Edi Petebang and Indramawan). The other weapons were books (including those made for formal education, from elementary schools to junior high schools), cassettes and magazines, for which ID produced up to 53 titles from 1992 to 2003. To expand its reach to a wider audience, ID collaborated with other NGOs in West Kalimantan to build, for example, the Koperasi Pancur Dangeri (Rubber Farmers Cooperatives, in 1994) and the Serikat Petani Karet Kalbar (West Kalimantan Rubber Farmers Union, founded in 2001). Institut Dayakologi’s collaboration with national and international NGOs produced some networks that worked on a range of issues, from environmental degradation (with WALHI), foreign debts (with the Anti-debt Coalition), agrarian reform (with the KPA, or Agrarian Reform Consortium), community forestry (with KPSHK, or the Consortium for the Empowerment of Community-based Forestry System), human rights (with JAPHAMA, or the Network for Human Rights Defense

11 During his 32-year reign in Indonesia, General Suharto founded around 100 foundations (yayasan) allegedly to launder extortion money, bribes and kickbacks from state or company workers as well as rogue business deals of his cronies into “clean” income, free of taxes. In 1990 these foundations gathered more than IDR 300 billion in assets (Aditjondro 1998). The Undang Undang No. 16 of 2001 disallowed the yayasan or foundations to both pay salaries to its management ranks and to divide the profits of the foundation operations among its management. (Even a yayasan was not allowed to have members.) Self-acclaimed non-profit establishments like Institut Dayakologi or Pancur Kasih surely would be affected very much by this new regulation. The safest way was thus to change the institution’s legal status into the others than the often-abused yayasan.

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and KOMNAS HAM, the National Commission for Human Rights) and also empowerment of adat laws and communities (with AMAN, or the Alliance for Indonesian Adat Communities). ID’s close cooperation with the US-based Ford Foundation for example, brought an endowment fund of as much as USD100,000 in 1997 (related to ID’s research during the ethnic riots) and another of USD500,000 in 2001 (Stephanus Djuweng in an interview written in a Ford Foundation Report (Sebuah Bangsa, Sebuah Perjalanan, Chapter 5, in www.fordfound.org/publications/ recent_articles/ docs// celebrating_ indonesia/05_indonesian.pdf)12. These funds, claimed to be well managed, grew into IDR 7 billion (that is USD 777,777 from the acknowledged original amount of USD 600,000). In 1996, the Biodiversity Support Program (a consortium of the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and the World Resource Institute, and funded by the United States Agency for International Development) lavishly supported the establishment of a National Participatory Mapping Network (Jaringan Kerja Pemetaan Partisipatif) with the Pancur Kasih Foundation as its principal member and whose methods were adopted to produce cheap participatory mapping processes. Having built a method of participatory mapping that cost only USD 2 per hectare of mapped area, Pancur Kasih personnel were chosen as the trainers for more aspiring participatory map-makers from the other provinces (page 30 of “Giving Birth to a Movement, Jaringan Kerja Pemetaan Partisipatif’s leaflet www.toryread.com/indonimg/indones3.pdf). A participatory map made in 1997 by the indigenous people living within the boundary of Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, quickly gained acknowledgement from the head of the National Park, who had tried for 20 years to evict those indigenous groups from the park. As the oil-dependent and corrupt regime grew weaker following blows in economic and political realms, its capacity to deal effectively with the growing and “louder” voice of the Dayak groups also diminished. The irrepressible voices of the Dayak groups became louder through the assistance of international NGOs, who also

12 The celebratory tone of the report, as shown by its title, is a resounding sign of a global institution’s stance towards economically shattered countries that must fall on their knees and beg for economic hand-outs from global monetary institutions.

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gained access to political decisions, as they provided much-needed capital for the economically and politically hard-pressed regime.

4.3 The Import of “Civil Society” (1989-1998) as Inconspicuous Perpetuation of Indigenous Subalternity for Negotiation Purposes The strong voices of the Dayak groups grew louder after the wind of change blowing from the dismantled Berlin Wall in 1989. Although originally used against the communist system, the new rather popular journalistic interpretation of civil society was then trained against repressive regimes all over the world, including Suharto’s regime. Riding on the back of pressure for “democratization” and the creation of a “civil society” (civic organizations versus the repressive state), international NGOs legitimated their appearance in the Indonesian national political scenes, as well as elsewhere. Growing in ubiquity, international NGOs recruited their local agents (national and local NGOs) to build an aura of respectability at an overwhelming speed. This section reveals how the development of these new pressures against the Suharto regime, pressures for more “democratization” which unfolded from 1989 to 1998 during Suharto’s reign, were shrewdly utilized to enlarge the growing space of negotiations by the indigenous groups under their leading members. This process, however, was not simply one-way traffic because the external agencies that put their interests at stake also became increasingly influential. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 took place, incidentally, only about three years from the time when the oil price sank to its lowest level, at around USD 10 per barrel in August 1986. On 25 June 1989, Flora Lewis, the New York Times’ senior foreign affairs correspondent quoted Antonio Gramsci’s famous passage from Notebook 7 (§16, p. 866)13 in her article “The Rise of ‘Civil Society’”

13 The brief passage from Notebook 7, written in late 1930 and translated in 1966, stated: “In the East the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed” (Buttigieg 2002: 423). The translation for Note su Machiavelli that contained the same passage (Gramsci 1966: 68) was read, “In [Russia] the state was everything. Civil society was primordial and gelatinous. In the West, between state and civil society there was a just relationship, and in the trembling of the state a robust structure of civil society was soon manifested.” This sentence was used by Gramsci (Bates 2002:

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(Buttigieg 2002: 423). In the article, Lewis declared that “The Communist ideal is destroying itself as the century ends, because it could not create the ‘fortresses and earthworks’ of civil society, nor accommodate them” and she wrote in the rest of the article a “hopelessly garbled account of Gramsci’s view” (Buttigieg 2002: 424, italics added). With one stroke of her pen, the senior editor opened a Pandora’s box full of more garbled accounts of Gramsci’s view from other journalists, authors, cursory readers of Gramsci and NGO activists. Lewis’ reification of civil society14 had turned a potent means of analysis, exposing the apparatuses and processes at work in civil society into celebratory fireworks for the inexorable and destined rise of the fortresses and earthworks of ‘civil society’ in the Soviet Union, against its oppressive and communist ‘Mother Russia’. The fireworks quickly attracted a larger audience. Like the famous blind men eager to find out the shape of an elephant, researchers probed and fathomed for the meanings of and for civil society. Seligman (1992: 201-206 cited in Hann 1996: 2-3) grouped the findings into three general distinctive usages: a ‘slogan’ for journalistic usage, an analytic term for social sciences’ empirical research and a normative or

257) to reject Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis in The Mass Strike: The Political Party and the Trade Union that economic crisis is the necessary and sufficient catalyst for a successful revolutionary thrust. 14 Civil society was only one important part of Gramsci’s analysis of the Italian Southern Question (subordination of the peasants of the southern mainland and islands to the industrialists, bankers and bureaucrats of the north). Peasants, Gramsci lamented, participated in their own subordination by subscribing to hegemonic values by accepting, admiring and even seeking to emulate many of the attributes of the super-ordinate class (Arnold 2000: 29). Picking Marx’s base-superstructure pair, Gramsci thus refined the superstructure into two great floors: civil society and political society. In Gramsci’s own words, “one can … distinguish two great ‘floors’ of the superstructure, that of what one may call ‘civil society,’ that is, of the totality of organisms commonly called ‘private’ and that of ‘political society or State’ and which correspond to the function of ‘hegemony’, which the dominant group exercises throughout society and to that of ‘direct rule’, or of power of command, which is expressed in the State and in ‘juridical’ government” (Gramsci 1966: 9). Reifying this analytical concept, Flora Lewis gave birth to a new independent entity called Soviet “civil society” that was able to rise and fight against its suppressors. The emphasis was on the assertion that the ‘private’ organisms were the [obedient] targets of the dominant group’s exercise of ‘hegemony’, so that the latter could inconspicuously blend ‘direct rule’ or power of command, with ‘hegemony’.

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visionary concept of a desirable social order. The most common usage of civil society as a slogan is to position it as being locked into zero-sum opposition with ‘the state’. The slogan was sometimes turned to be a moving force when the users and their audiences perceived the slogan as for example, part of the “magic” of a social transformation (see Sampson 1996: 122-124) or a “shining emblem” (Gellner 1994: 1 cited in Hann 1996: 2). Others dismissed the possibility of a strict definition [of civil society] and judged the term as confusing, redundant or “seductive, but perhaps ultimately specious” (Kumar 1994: 130). The reification of civil society pioneered by Flora Lewis went beyond Gramsci’s wildest dreams, especially in Indonesia and West Kalimantan. Vaclav Havel’s excuse that ‘communism brought history, and with it all natural development, to a halt. … national and cultural differences were kept on ice’ (1993, cited in Hann 1996: 7) was quickly supported by Wedel’s (1994: 323 cited in Hann 1996: 1) assertion that “Under communism the nations of Eastern Europe never had a ‘civil society. … [civil society] exists when individuals and groups are free to form organizations that function independently of the state, and that can mediate between citizens and state.” Wedel (1994: 323) thus argued that creating such a [civil] society and supporting organizations independent of the state, or NGOs, had been seen by donors as the connective tissue of democratic political culture. In Albania during 1994 for example, the Danish government readily built a foundation to fund Albanian NGO activities, organize training and build an NGO information center for Albanian NGOs and foreign donors (Sampson 1996: 122). When ‘discourses’ like ‘civil society’ were accompanied by millions of dollars and the apparatus of projectization, they became projects. Sampson (1996: 140-141) charged that Albania’s civil society, lacking the more historical development of a civil society as in other European countries, remained dependent on concepts, organizations and funds from western agencies. Dependency meant that Albanians had to manipulate imported concepts to procure western resources and then became masters in the use of the jargon of democracy programs, project management, capacity building and of other catch-phrases such as ‘transparency’ and ‘empowerment’. Having turned themselves into brokers between the west and the

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east, some Albanians manipulated15 resources and thrived off the maintenance of barriers. Riding the celebrated wind of change coming from the claimed ‘end of the Cold War’ in 1989 and fuelled by the economic crises (the oil shock from 1982 to 1986), Indonesian NGOs changed their resistance topics from previously ‘tame’ issues such as family planning and ‘development’ against the growingly suppressive authoritarian state16, into more aggressive and direct “advokasi” (“empowerment,” and “community rights”) in cases specifically related to state oppression against poor farmers. This ‘thicker’ political character became more obvious (Elridge 1989 cited by Culla 2006: 98) when NGOs (allied with students) moved on to political issues such as “democratization”, “transformation”, “structural change” and so ignited farmer resistance in land grab cases such as Kedung Ombo17. To the Indonesian

15 Manipulation and exploitation of the representations used by others, as Sampson claimed (1996: 141), was hardly new in the aid context. East Europeans could profit by visiting East African communities, where local officials and head men, skillfully manipulating the discourse of ‘community development’ and ‘decentralization’, prodding the guilty conscience and massaging the socialist leanings of Scandinavian aid workers, were able to utilize millions of dollars of foreign aid for their own private agendas. The players ranged from major donor agencies to the consultants, project managers and other operators (legal and illegal) who appeared on the scene, whenever new resources were distributed in unclear situations. This uncertainty created a ‘magic’ transition, in which inexplicable wealth came down from a place called Europe, or from other countries or agencies. The magic of the transition needed strange jargon and a host of rituals and ceremonies in which inequality between west and east masqueraded as ‘partnership’, or ‘coordination’. 16 One of the earliest post-independence Non-Government Organizations (NGO) was the Perkumpulan Keluarga Berencana Indonesia (PKBI, or Association for Indonesia Family Planning) founded on 23 December 1957 and that dealt with reproduction issues (Culla 2006: 87-88) under the umbrella of the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). Ikatan Petani Pancasila (Association of Pancasila Farmers) founded in 1958, was the seed of another NGO called Bina Swadaya (per 17 July 1985) founded on 24 May 1967 (as Yayasan Sosial Tani Membangun, or Social Foundation of Developing Farmers) to increase the income of farmers and fishermen. Lembaga Bantuan Hukum (Legal Aid Foundation) was founded in 1970, before the founding of LP3ES (explained in footnote 28) in 1971. By 1988, the number of Indonesian NGOs was 669, of which 443 were based in Java (Culla 2006: 92 citing Laporan Penelitian LP3ES 2000: 75). 17 A World Bank-funded dam project seized 5,898 ha of farm land belonging to 30,000 Javanese farmers (Central Java). They demanded compensation of IDR10,000 (USD 1.1) per sq. m of farm land and IDR 35,000 (USD3.8) for housing lots. The

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government’s chagrin, some Indonesian and international NGOs issued an aide- memoire and letter to the president of the World Bank during the Fifth Conference of INGI (Inter-NGO Conference on IGGI18 Matters) in Nieuwpoort, Brussels in Belgium, in order to expose the social and ecological impacts of the World Bank- funded Kedung Ombo Dam Project in Central Java. In such an environment, the term civil society was quickly accepted by academics as well as by students and NGO activists, as a slogan to mobilize resistance against the authoritarian, suppressive state. Hikam (1995), for example, rushed through a doctoral study to relate social movements in Indonesia as a part of civil society, followed in turn by Culla (1999). An earlier conference in 1988, sponsored by some Australian experts on Indonesia and attended by some Indonesian academics and activists, produced a report that was claimed by Culla (2006: 59) as the “starting point” of a ‘different’ perspective to understand the political realities in Indonesia, through a new role of civil society. Arief Budiman, one of the most notable Indonesian academics in the conference, wrote in the report that (cited in Culla 2006: 59) “in talks about democracy, people usually talk about the interaction between state and civil society. They assume that if civil society vis-à-vis state is relatively strong, democracy moves on. On the contrary, if the state is strong and civil society weak, democracy stands still. Thus, democratization is understood as a process of the empowerment for civil society19” (italics added).

farmers also exposed the use of intimidation by the state agencies, to force farmers’ to accept cheap compensation (Hiariej 2005: 219-220). NGO and student activists then formed the Solidarity Group for Kedung Ombo Farmers. 18 IGGI (The Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia) was a consortium that consulted with the World Bank about the feasibility of loans, aids and grants to Indonesia. INGI (Intern-NGO Conference on IGGI Matters) itself was founded by the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI, a legal aid NGO) and de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Internationale Bijstand (NOVIB, a Dutch NGO for International Development) to provide inputs, criticisms, and recommendations for the IGGI, regarding the loans given to improve the Indonesian poor’s condition. Later the INGI changed its name to INFID (International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development) after the IGGI had changed its name into Consultative Groups on Indonesia (CGI), in the early 1990s (Culla 2006: 92-93). 19 The original text in Indonesian was: “Bicara tentang demokrasi, biasanya orang berbicara tentang interaksi antara negara dan civil society. Asumsinya adalah jika civil society vis-a-vis negara relatif kuat, maka demokrasi akan berlangsung.

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Trying to tame and ride on the back of the new-found “civil society” animal, many people offered their local interpretation for this foreign concept according to their own interests. Anwar Ibrahim, then the Minister of Finance and Vice-Prime Minister of Malaysia coined a new term with Islamic hues ‘masyarakat madani” (borrowed from Arabic and which meant society (masyarakat) and civilized (madani)) at a National Symposium in Jakarta on 26 September 1995 (Culla 2006: 37) . Knowing the tame connotation of the new term, the then Vice President B.J. Habibie even issued a Presidential Decree with “masyarakat madani” as part of its title (Presidential Decree No. 198 of 1998 about founding of “Tim Nasional Reformasi Menuju Masyarakat Madani” (National Team for Reformation towards Masyarakat Madani).20 More local interpretations came in the form of “masyarakat kewargaan” (masyarakat for society and kewargaan for its individual membership) from the Association of Indonesian Political Science (AIPI) in 24-26 January 1995 and “masyarakat sipil” (masyarakat for society, sipil can be either civic [for citizenship] or non-military civilians) by Mansour Fakih (1996). The number of NGOs increased significantly from fewer than 6,000 in the 1960s to 10,000 in 1996 and then to 20,000 in 2000 (by 2005 this number was around 24,500 NGOs (Hermawanti 2005: 67)21. Up to 2002, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Mendagri) had registered 13,500 NGOs; with around 90 percent of these registered NGOs received funding from foreign sources22 (Kompas 13 January 2003). The

Sebaliknya, jika negara kuat dan civil society lemah, maka demokrasi tidak berjalan. Dengan demikian, demokratisasi dipahami sebagai proses pemberdayaan civil society.” This assertion clearly pits the state against civil society, as two separate and distinct entities. 20 President Abdurrahman Wahid (Oct 1999 - July 2000) quickly dissolved this National Team on 21 February 2000 with a Presidential Decree made on the pretext of an improvement in the efficiency of government agencies.

21 In Africa, Marina Ottaway, an expert on civil society and post-war democracy from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noticed that "In Africa, a $10,000 grant buys you an NGO, so these groups have multiplied exponentially. One of their main characteristics is that they have three people: a director, a secretary and a driver. They do not have members. Their usefulness in promoting democracy is very limited” (Flora Lewis, The New York Times 22 March 2002). 22 These NGOs appeared like mushrooms after a heavy rain. Like a disciplined legionnaire of indefatigable ants, they swarm the sources of their food once they smell

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dependency of Indonesian NGOs [on foreign aid]?? had been so chronic that one of the biggest NGO for legal aid, the Jakarta-based YLBHI (Yayasan Lembaga Hukum Indonesia, Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation) was known to have been in bad shape with a lack of funding after six years of heavy dependency on foreign sources. Its own Vice-Director, Riswan Lapagu, acknowledged that shrugging off the reliance on foreign donors had been difficult; in Indonesia, however, making proposals to donors had been always easier than calling Indonesian citizens themselves to financially support NGO activities (Kompas 13 January 2003). The donors themselves had been known to change their funding disbursement policies, even the allegedly “biggest” Indonesian NGO, known as WALHI-The Friends of Earth Indonesia (see Appendix I for a short history of WALHI, the biggest NGO in Indonesia and also Appendix AC for the dubious interests of the ‘donors’ of NGO activities). Three prominent foreign donors—NOVIB (the Netherlands), Triple Eleven (Belgium) and SIDA (Sweden)—stopped their funding to the YLBHI (Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation) after 2002 because they changed their aid focus to the “consolidation of democracy”, “institutional restructuring” and “decentralization”. The worn-out and tired issues of civil society, which had been fought for since the 1980s, were then dumped since Indonesia was by then considered a democratic country (Kompas, 27 June 2003). The trend of decreasing amounts of foreign funding and the changeability of mobilization “slogans” (including development, democratization, civil society, reformation, restructuring, decentralization and good

it. A report from the DFID-Multistakeholder Forestry Program (2002: 9) illustrated aptly this phenomenon. For a project called the Multi-stakeholder Forestry Program in Indonesia, the DFID (Department for International Development) reported the first rounds (1999-2001/2001-2002) grant of BHP 1,377,309 to 80 partners (out of which only 24 were still active at the time of the report, published on June 2002) (DFID- Multi-stakeholder Forestry Program 2002: 9). A large number of partners proposed short-term (less than a month) initiatives in the form of ‘workshops’, ‘consultations’, ‘preliminary research’, or ‘field testing’ and therefore reduced the average size of the grant from BHP 51,650 in 1999, to BHP 10,380 in 2001. The profile of the project partners also swelled from international/national NGOs (40 percent of partners), local government units (40 percent), and local NGOs (20 percent) in 1999, into international/national NGOs (22 percent), local government (6 percent), central government (8 percent), donor organizations (2 percent), local NGOs (31 percent), university/research (23 percent) and people’s organization (8 percent) in 2001 (DFID Multi-stakeholder Forestry Program, 2002: 10).

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governance from the 1970s to 1990s) revealed the secret behind all of the fuss about NGO activities: a sustainable fetishism with the commodity called “slogans23”. The wind of change that blew after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 not only reached nearby Eastern European and Balkan countries such as Albania but also spread to Indonesia. International NGOs, celebrating and campaigning for anti- suppression issues (i.e. human rights, indigenous rights and democracy), suddenly gained an aura of respectability and inevitability in the regions that had oppressive leaders. They supported and funded the proliferation of third world NGOs working at the national and local level, at an overwhelming speed. The speed and rate of support, however, turned to be a debilitating factor in the natural growth of third world NGOs, which found themselves only allowed to be amenable to the issues handpicked by their international funders. That some NGO funding agencies supported both sides of

23 The slogan “empower civil society”, in vogue during the 1990s and until the fall of General Suharto in 1998, was a fetish when it mystified the new social relations of production of “empowering products” such as maps, conferences, congresses and legal moves between the capital mobilizers/owners (foreigners), mediated by a new class of brokers borrowing Sampson’s (1996: 141) term, either foreign or local (who managed the [re-]production of such products) and the “new” laboring class, known as NGOs working hand-in-hand sometimes with the so-called “marginalized groups”. The buyers of these “products” were the donors, national or personal, who were willing to give away some profits to the capital managers for either philanthropic or non-philanthropic motives. (For example a Dutch NGO Cordaid, wrote on page 18 of its leaflet in http://www.cordaid.nl/Upload/Peace_and_Conflict.pdf that “Dutch children are bewildered when they hear these stories [Palestinian children raped or blocked from school]. Their lives are very different.”) Social relations between [these] persons become disguised, as the social relations between things (Taussig 1980: 26). People, related to each other indirectly through the mediation of the market, guiding the circulations and relations of commodities, become dependent for their livelihood on the relationships established by commodities and the market becomes the guarantee of their spiritual coherence (Taussig 1980: 26). Fetishism denotes the attribution of life, autonomy, power and even dominance, to otherwise inanimate objects and pre-supposes the draining of these qualities from the human actors who bestow the attribution … the sociology of exploitation masquerades as a natural relationship between systemic artifacts (Taussig 1980: 31-32). For the reasons of difficulty in both the quantification and qualification of the inherent exploitation processes, such as “profits” and “use-values versus exchange-values” related to the ersatz commodity fetishism, this study prefers to term it, instead, the “fetishism of simulacra production”. It is suffice to say that the terms used within the production of the “tools of empowerment”, have mystified the real social relations behind relations among things, i.e. maps that appear to have inherent power by themselves.

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the struggles going on (for example, the indigenous rights NGOs vis-à-vis the multinational mining companies), meant these funding agencies had to accommodate both sides, sometimes through ethically questionable solutions. Having exposed the two-way and dubious nature of the practices carried out in the ranks of the NGOs and their supporters, this section will continue with an exposition regarding the space created for further involvement of the NGOs and their supporters, after the ecological issues related to the governmentality of the post- colonial regimes were manipulated through intense campaigns. A lack of public services and environmental concern from government nevertheless can be manipulated, even by the governments themselves, for their own negotiation purposes and wider power games, as the case in West Kalimantan will show.

4.4 Ecological Destruction as an Additional Pretext for Creating a Larger Negotiation Space for NGO Involvement This section reveals the rate of ecological destruction out of which the indigenous groups, with the Dayaks as notable actors, launched their opportunistic move for a larger negotiation space. West Kalimantan is often cited as a brutal example of the gross exploitation of natural resources in a province, without any attention to being paid the province’s human development. Boasting economic growth of between 7.45 percent (1994) and 9.50 percent (1995) and with state revenues from taxes as much as IDR 2.021 billion annually from its natural resources: logs, mines, plantations, farms and fishing, the province stood as one of the best five provinces. However, it also stood as one of the worst three provinces in terms of the poverty level in 1997 (Kompas 14 December 1998). The ecological effects of such a development were also terrible. The Forestry Office West Kalimantan (Dinas Kehutanan Kalbar) reported in 2000, that out of 14,680,700 ha of forest spread across 14 watershed areas (Daerah Aliran Sungai) in 8 districts and 1 municipality, around 5.8 million ha had been turned into critical sites24. Around 1.5 million ha of these

24 Rice (1992: 390), takes the definition of “critical sites” as any site with an erosion level higher than 189 sq. m per ha. Lewis and Rice’s study (1989) found that roads yielded 70 percent of the total erosion volume. For the report of the Forestry Office West Kalimantan, the definition is not given.

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critical sites stood along the watershed areas and 1.8 million ha stood in forested areas (and the rest lay outside the forests). The Program of Sistem Hutan Kemasyarakatan (SHK, or Community-based Forestry System) in West Kalimantan claimed that around 70 percent of the 9 million ha of forest in the province had become critical by 1997 (D. Siyok 2003c: 21). The Department of Forestry and Estates, however, reported that in 1997 West Kalimantan still had forest canopy covering as much as 46.1 percent of its area. Forest World estimated that in 2004, West Kalimantan’s remaining forest canopy stood at 5.7 million ha, or 38.7 percent of the total province area (D. Uyub 2005a: 39). Such a rampaging level of destruction had been wrought by 67 logging concessionaires, 88 palm oil companies and 40 industrial tree plantation companies, still operating in February 2005. By December 2005, this number had increased to 458 logging companies, 149 palm oil estates, 182 industrial tree plantations and 27 mining companies, operating over an area of 9.9 million ha of West Kalimantan (Gunui’ 2005: 12)25. The exploitation of natural resources that also neglected human development, creating grim statistics on public services such as health, education, and transportation. For a population as large as 3.7 million people (Biro Pusat Statistik West Kalimantan, 2001)26, the province only had 20 hospitals, 2 mental health

25 The 458 logging companies operated over an area as big as 5,856,325 ha; the 149 oil palm estates over an area of 3,560,251 ha; the 182 industrial tree plantation companies, 1,188,986 ha and the 27 mining companies, over 2,007,598 ha. All in all, just 816 companies wrought havoc over 9,889,354 ha of West Kalimantan’s land alone.

26 Dayaks stood as the majority (33.06 percent, or 1,234,162 persons), followed by the Malay (32.37 percent, or 1,208,537 persons), Javanese (10.32 percent, or 385,602 persons), Chinese (9.45 percent, or 352,939 persons), Madurese (5.45 percent, or 203,612 persons), Bugis (3.24 percent, or 121,223 persons), Banjarese (0.64 percent, or 24,117 persons), others (5.20 percent, or 194,115 persons), and foreigners (0.23 percent, or 8,643 persons). Fox and Atok (1998) estimated that around 25 percent of West Kalimantan’s population, or around 850,000 people (likely to be Dayaks) lived in the state-claimed forest areas. This group of Dayaks was composed of 121 sub- groups that were scattered throughout Sintang District (34 sub-groups), Ketapang District (31 sub-groups), Sanggau District (24 sub-groups), Kapuas Hulu District (18 sub-groups), Sambas and Bengkayang Districts (6 sub-groups), and Pontianak District (8 sub-groups) (the last three districts are considered “coastal”) (Agus Tamen 2000: 28, citing an ethno-linguistic research of Institut Dayakology, July 1999).

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facilities, 199 village clinics (and 729 hamlet clinics), 3 mother and child health centers, 11 clinical laboratories, 24 optical stores, 1 drug abuse rehabilitation, 61 drug stores with pharmacists (and 242 licensed drug stores), 6 health supply shops and 4 traditional herbal medicine producers (E. Ngiuk and D. Uyub 2004: 43). With the total number of physicians at 428 in 2001, diarrhea (and other unstated infectious diseases) stood as the number one killer (1,159, or 7.97 percent of all deaths) in 2001. Street accidents and strokes (rupture of blood vessels) were the number two and three killers respectively, with 917 and 559 fatalities. The mother and newborn mortality rate (for Pontianak municipality only) in 2001 was 30 mothers and 76 babies per 11,770 births (E. Ngiuk and D. Uyub 2004: 42). (For the whole Pontianak District, the statistics showed a mortality rate of 128 mothers and 28 babies per 12,273 births.) Even if babies survived, they would face a hard time finding a school for themselves. As of February 2004, the number of schools (from pre-elementary to high school, state or private) in West Kalimantan was only 5,480, with 32,649 teachers. Around half (52.19 percent) of the classrooms of 4,007 elementary schools out of 5,356 schools (pre-elementary to high schools) were damaged and/or unfit as schools. The province thus gained the dubious honor as one of the worst five provinces out of 27 provinces nationwide, in terms of its literacy rate (D. Uyub and E. Ngiuk 2004: 30-31). From its total budgetary plans in 2004 (IDR 545.27 billion or USD 60.5 million), the provincial government only provided IDR 20.98 billion (12.81 percent) to the education sector, despite a minimum requirement of 20 percent being set by the Regulation about National Education. (The budget for officials’ travels was set at IDR 11.6 billion, or half of the whole budget for education.) The governor Usman Djafar claimed an increase in the education years figure per capita in West Kalimantan as 6.8 years (one person finishes elementary school in average) (compared to the officially recorded 6.2 years in 2002) (Pontianak Post 17 November 2006)27.

27 In an apparent bid to appease the electorate for his re-election (2008-2013), the governor boasted increases in economic growth (2.01 percent in 2002, to 4.68 in 2005), domestic and foreign investments (IDR 3.781 billion/310 billion in 2002, to IDR 4.097/573 billion in 2005), the budget (IDR 2.9 trillion in 2002, to IDR 5.7 trillion in 2005), life expectancy (64 years in 2002, to 64.4 years in 2005) and the literacy rate (88.46 percent in 2002, to 88.67 percent in 2005). What went down was

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As the forest extraction industries (logging and mining) had little need for good roads which were conveniently replaced by the networks of rivers and rivulets, the companies, mostly cronies of General Suharto, never built, or paid someone else to build, good roads in West Kalimantan. As a result, the three decades of brutal exploitation of forest resources produced good sealed roads only in coastal areas and left seasonal, gravel roads, mostly for logger trucks and goods/passenger transportation, in the hinterlands. The length and condition of roads under the classification “national road” was disappointing. Out of 1,575 km of “national roads” (jalan nasional), only 70.67 percent were covered with asphalt (and only 41.18 percent of these asphalt roads were considered “good”) and the rest were gravel and soil roads. “Provincial roads”, which covered 1,517 km, had 78.72 percent of their length sealed under asphalt (and only 25.22 percent of this was categorized as “good”) (Bambang Bider and D. Uyub 2005: 12). Three decades of direct rule by Suharto regime had left a deep environmental scar on the indigenous groups who relied on natural resources, notably the Dayaks. Statistics on public service availability speak volumes about the “failures” of the regime to return some parts of the revenues gained from resource extraction, for the general welfare of the indigenous groups. This lack of public service however, was to be used by the ruling groups as another double-edged weapon in order to launch a new campaign for their electoral power. However, during the chaotic situation that existed shortly after the fall of Suharto in 1998, the national struggle for power obscured the same struggle taking place at the provincial level. The next section shows how the previously known negotiation space and methods moved into uncharted territory during the chaotic post-Suharto era from May 1998. Not only the indigenous groups, but also other groups such as the Malay, the university students and members of parliament, took their rare chance to join in the negotiations.

the unemployment rate (8.57 percent in 2002, to 8.03 percent in 2005), the poverty rate (15.46 percent in 2002, to 13.91 percent in 2005) and infant mortality (52 per 1,000 births in 2002, to 47 per 1,000 births in 2005).

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4.5 Civil Society and Opportunistic Space of Negotiations during the Economic and Political Crises (1998-2004)

This section shows how the indigenous or subalternized groups (the Malays, the students and politicians from the weak, as well as from the strong parties) took their chance to negotiate their hitherto non-influential profile into the government’s policy-making. Since these reactions took place in a rather spasmodic, short-term chained reaction, the relationship between each reaction and the other was clearly visible. The most notable and manifest resistance actions taken as an example were the violent anti-Madurese campaign (by the Malays group of Sambas), the student- and politician-led campaign to oust the military governor, the failed attempts by the indigenous groups to win the general elections (in 1999 and 2004) and the return of the old political power structure through governor elections (2003). The anti- Madurese campaign was a reaction from the notoriously phlegmatic Malay groups to self-mobilize, after the horrible anti-Madurese violence carried out by the Dayaks during 1997 and 1998. The failure of the governor (a symbolic remnant of the old Suharto regime) to deal with the plight of the dislocated Madurese was quickly used by the students to launch a series of anti-governor campaigns. Riding the euphoric wave of the anti-Suharto reformasi movement, provincial politicians from all parties, except for the restrained Democratic Party and military representatives, joined the [failed] anti-incumbent campaign. At this point, these unhappy parties mobilized their resources, including the rogue rioters, to protest the decision of the 55 elected members of the People’s Representative Assembly (Provincial Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah), who voted for only one “real” Dayak (along with three Malays and one Chinese) to represent the province in the Jakarta- based People Consultative Assembly (the highest political body). The riots turned the tables toward the protesters, as they pushed for and succeeded in gaining a new composition of two Dayaks, two Malays and one Chinese. When the Dayaks launched a violent protest against the election of a Malay governor in 2003, the protest was quickly resolved after intervention by the Dayak district head of Landak District. Futhermore, during the general election of 2004, the non-participation of the primordialist Dayak party steered Dayak votes to the other big parties (the Golkar

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Party and Democratic Party), or into smaller Christian-based parties (out of 24 participating parties). Despite all these activities, the subaltern groups failed to achieve any significant progress in the “reform” of the government system and its practices. After the successful move to oust President Suharto from the presidency, the waves of resistance against the weakening administration all over the country, and especially in troubled provinces like West Kalimantan, grew stronger. Seen as part of the ousted New Order system, the program of transmigration was the first experienced by the Malays of Sambas who had witnessed that the proportion of Madurese settlers in their district (almost 10 percent of the total population) had grown beyond ‘normal’. The whole rampage was triggered by a simple accident when a Madurese was ‘caught’ in the act of an alleged theft, something for which the Madurese settlers were notorious, in a Malay village. Upon the return of their captured friend, the friends of this captured Madurese retaliated with a bloody attack on the Malay village during the Idul Fithri celebration, the largest feast for Muslims. The response of the Malays in Sambas district was to avenge and evict the Madurese from their district, thus creating massive fatalities and evacuations. The surprising thing about the conflict was the involvement of the Malay group, who had always been considered the most patient people in the province. Dr. Chairil Effendy from the Pontianak-based Pusat Studi Kebudayaan Melayu (Center for Studies of Malay Cultures) in Pontianak (Stanley 2000: 89-90) believed that previously, the thefts, robberies and even murders by the Madurese against Malays were allowed to pass; and thus an image of the Malays as cowards was formed. The outrageous physical assault against the Muslim Malays during the Idul Fithri by the Muslim Madurese (the day when people should forgive each other) was considered a violation of the limits of the Malays’ patience. The breakdown of law enforcement brought feelings of injustice, disappointment and deep frustration. Violence, usually the most remote solution to a problem in the minds of the Malays, then became their tragic choice. The other surprises from this Malay uprising against the Madurese were the methods of assault they used (an imitation of the Dayaks’ tactics) and also the demands for Madurese eviction from the Malay-dominated district, after waves of

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Madurese refugees had moved to coastal cities. Some even returned to Madura island. The assault method utilized by the Malays was infantry (walking “soldiers”), consisting of 100 to 300 people and armed with rudimentary weapons such as clubs, blades, arrows, air rifles and simple firearms, who then carried out a frontal attack against a pre-determined target (a village, or cluster of villages). These raiders (usually during the day) decapitated resisting adults and scared away the women, children and the elderly through the use of arson. Different to the case of their fight against the Dayaks28, the Madurese settlers of Sambas District retaliated with attacks on the Malays, such as attacks on the wounded Malays in hospital. This series of violent outbursts shown by the Malays of Sambas incidentally revealed the government’s (security forces, military, politicians) bias toward the Madurese, much to the chagrin of the [local] Malays, whose counter-attacks grew fiercer. (Dayaks joined the hunt against the Madurese after a group of 20 Madurese shot at a moving pick-up truck full of Dayak workers coming home from work to

28 The Dayaks have the cultural means and are prepared to justify their assaults against the Madurese (or anyone else who fits the classification of “enemy”), through a pre-assault (or before, the more culturally acceptable mengayao or headhunting) ritual called nyaru’ tariu, or the summoning of the spirit known as kamang, who looks like a human being but is invisible (Petebang 2005: 46). Between 5 and 6 pm and before the sunset, the Imam Aya’ (Big Imam) offers a sacrifice in front of the sacrifice altar (panyugu or padagi), in order to summon help from the kamangs. But before this summoning is carried out, either the panglima (warlord) or imam nyangahatn (chant prayer) must have finished a ritual called mato’, which is very important in choosing the targeted enemy, finding out the enemy’s strength and finding out the right time of the assault. The result of the mato’ ritual is very important in the decision to resume, or to delay the attack on the “enemy.” After the chants are sung, the warlord spreads yellow rice (gingered rice), sacrifices one red or black dog, spills the blood of a red rooster and then screams loudly (tariu) 3 or 7 times. The Dayaks of Kanayatn believe that the kamangs (invisible human-like spirits), once they “fill” the bodies of Dayak warriors, can smell the enemies, disappear from human sight and become invulnerable to metal or bullets. The problem is that these spirits drink blood and eat brains. The people attending the mato’ ritual can become the place for these kamangs to dwell for a while and when this happens, their personalities change. These kamang- influenced people become fierce warriors, or bala. The Madurese settlers, facing these fierce warriors fighting under the influence of spirits, have rarely retaliated against the attacks, as far as the history of conflict between the Dayaks and the Madurese is concerned. Usually, the Madurese simply flee and let the attackers return to their original base after they have run out of logistics, or create check-points on roads in order to maim individuals suspected of being ‘Dayaks’.

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Samalantan sub-district and killed a Dayak by the name of Martinus Amat, on 16 March 1999. Thousands of Dayak mourners attended his funeral on 17 March and then ransacked hundreds of Madurese houses in Samalantan sub-district). In fact, security forces airlifted the badly outnumbered and haplessly surrounded Madurese from Sanggau Ledo and Samalantan to Pontianak’s Supadio air base. Around 2,351 Madurese from Pemangkat, Tebas and Jawai were brought with battleships to safe places in the coastal city Singkawang (Stanley 2000: 11). National politicians, such as Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati (later to become Indonesian president and Vice President respectively, in October 1999), as well as Amien Rais (leader of the seat- winning Partai Amanat Nasional in the June 1999 general election) all condemned the Malays of Sambas as barbarians when they destroyed property such as houses and mosques. The Madurese left in Sambas then took refuge (Stanley 2000: 58). At the end of May 1999 around 21,000 Madurese refugees, who were scattered across many places in Pontianak and Sambas, were in dire needs of supplies. A mere 841 security force personnel from 10 battle units were unable to contain the anti-Madurese pogroms that spread to all 16 sub-districts in Sambas and the government had no choice but to evacuate the Madurese (Purwana 2003: 74). The Minister of Social Affairs quickly declared a ration of 400 grams of rice and IDR 1,500 (USD 0.16) per day per refugee. However, corruption and extortion by state agencies involved in the refugee camps plagued the refugees beyond imagination. Questionable transactions appeared, for example, when the state’s Bureau of Public Works and Regional Office of Transmigration (Kanwil Transmigrasi) competed to be the contractor for the relocation project for the refugees, somewhere in Batu Ampar sub-district. The project’s original value of IDR 92 billion (USD 10.22 million) (each household got a piece of land and a house valued at IDR 27 million) was reported later to be IDR 90 billion. The then Governor, Maj. Gen. Aspar Aswin29 promised

29 Born in 13 April 1940 in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, he graduated from Akademi Militer Nasional Malang (AMN). From 1967 to 1968 he was assigned to the anti- insurgency campaign in West Kalimantan and reached a position as the commander of the Resort (Provincial) Military Command 121 Alam Bana Wanawai, West Kalimantan in 1991, before he was appointed as the Vice Governor of Bali in 1990. In 1993, he became the Governor of West Kalimantan and held that post until 1998, but was then re-appointed for the 1998 to 2003 period. As part of Suharto’s New Order

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land of 1.25 ha, a 6 month ration (of rice, salted fish, sugar, salt and soap/detergent) and seedlings for each household, from a grant (no amount stated) given by the Japanese government (Stanley 2000: 97-98). Later, the Madurese refugees refused to move to Tebang Kacang village (Batu Ampar subdistrict), because the real cost of each house built for them was a mere IDR 5 million (USD 555.5), instead of the promised IDR 27 million (Kompas 13 July 1999, as cited in http://adhikusumaputra. blogspot.com). These problems, as well as other roles played by the governor as a part of the remnants of New Order, provided the ammunition for the students of Pontianak to “reform” (the euphemism for “ousting”) the governor from his remaining time in office, in the early 2000s. The debate regarding the proposed solution by a member of the National Commission of Human Rights, Bambang W. Suharto, to increase the status (and thus the military strength) of the West Kalimantan Military Command Headquarters back to KODAM, was fiercely rejected by the leaders of most eminent groups in the province. The Dayaks, through their representative on the Jakarta-based MPR-RI (People Consultative Assembly, National Level) Dr A.R. Mecer, quickly issued a press release in some newspapers and radio stations rejecting the planned establishment of a KODAM (military establishment for the regional level, with at least 10,000 personnel) in West Kalimantan and demanded a federal republic (Thomas Tion et. al 2000: 4; to see how “thick” was the history of West Kalimantan with the federal state system, refer to Appendix AD, especially the part during the rule of Sultan Syarif Hamid Alkadri II, from 1913 to 1978). The representatives and intellectuals among West Kalimantan’s Malays and Chinese groups (as well as the Church’s representatives) similarly voiced their rejection to the establishment of a

(1967-1998), he was involved in the perpetuation of the monopoly over the famous Sambas orange, held by the companies of Suharto’s family since 1988 (14 April to 14 November 1988, by Tommy Suharto’s company; 18 July 1991 to 19 December 1993 by Bambang Suharto’s company; 27 September 1993 to September 1997, by PT. Rajasri Sejahtera (owner unstated)). This monopoly, which “suffocated” the orange farmers, was lifted only on 28 January 1998 by Governor Major General Aspar Aswin, almost a year after the value of the rupiah was shattered by the 1997 economic crisis. By 1999, the volume produced by the pride of West Kalimantan’s farmers had gone from 234,509 tons produced in 1992, to a mere 6,792 tons in 1998 (http://www.sinarharapan.co.id/berita/0305/ 09/sh04.html).

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KODAM. The Madurese, who suffered the most during the recurring episodes of anti- Madurese violence by the Dayaks and Malays, were split into two groups: the Madurese students, as an anti-KODAM group and the IKAMRA (United Families of Madurese in West Kalimantan), who were a pro-KODAM group (refer to Appendix AE to see the end of this debate). Thus, the struggle between the supporters of a local autonomy, federal and de- militarized system and those of a centralized state, united republic and militarized system, turned into a more indirect confrontation revolving around the symbols or actors of the suppressive New Order system. In West Kalimantan, the ammunition to fight the vestiges of the New Order was focused by the pro-reformasi groups, toward the incumbent governor, Maj. Gen. Aspar Aswin. To soften the tone of attack against the governor, the students—the main body of the anti-governor campaigns—used the rampant corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN or Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme) under his rule. Having already sensed the heat coming from the calls to oust the Governor, the DPRD I in West Kalimantan demanded that after January 2000, the Department of Internal Affairs (Kementerian Dalam Negeri) issue a method of “impeachment” against incumbent governors. Articles 45 and 46 of the new Government Regulation (undang undang) No. 22 in 1999 regarding Provincial Governance had already allowed DPRD I to propose the impeachment of the governor in the case governor annual progress report (every March) is refused. On 5 January 2000, the head of DPRD I West Kalimantan, Gusti Syamsumin, stated that opposition against the incumbent governor had been increasing and that he must prepare ahead of the annual progress, planned on 14 June 2000 (Kompas 6 January 2000). On that fateful day of 14 June 200030, thousands of students from many universities in Pontianak crowded the building of the DPRD I in West Kalimantan,

30 On 11 June 2000, Governor Aswin claimed that his governorship had been strongly supported and legitimized by the people. He was elected by 35 out of 45 members of DPRD I, from the results of the 1997 election (not from the more recent 1999 election). The head of the PDI P faction in DPRD I, Firmansyah, insisted that the legitimacy for Aspar Aswin’s governorship had evaporated, because the DPRD I that had voted for him had already gone, but also because the general election in 1997 was dirty, fabricated and fraudulently un-democratic (Kompas 13 June 2000).

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where the incumbent Governor, Maj. Gen. Aspar Aswin, was to read his annual progress report in front of the 55-members of DPRD I. The students demanded that the DPRD I should dump the governor’s progress report, because the governor had been implicated in corruption, collusion and nepotism (popularly abbreviated as KKN, or Korupsi, Kolusi and Nepotisme), as well as failures to bring ‘reformasi’ in the province, and in the maltreatment of Madurese refugees from the previous Sambas conflict (Erma S. Ranik and Tim 2000: 15). After the governor read his 51-page laporan pertanggungjawaban (literally, ‘report of responsibility’) at 9am, the students kept on shouting their demands to oust the governor. Suddenly, around 12.15 pm and in front of the governor’s office, gun fire was heard and the protesters spread out on the way back to their base at Tanjungpura State University. A Pontianak State Polytechnic student by the name of Syafrudin, was found wounded in the head and another friend by the name of Sulaiman, from Panca Bhakti University in Pontianak, was found bleeding (another student also received a fractured leg bone). Syafrudin (21) died in Dr. Sudarso Hospital 30 minutes after he was allegedly shot by the police cordon at the governor’s office. Although some student- led fact-finding teams found the projectile that wounded and killed Syafrudin, the police commander, Brig. Gen. Atok Rismanto, denied the use of live bullets and said that the wounds on Syafrudin’s head (9 cm by 10 cm) were caused by blunt objects (Kompas 16 June 2000). The physician who performed the autopsy on Syafrudin, Dr. Sumara Niman, preferred to remain silent (Kompas 16 June 2000). Five fraksis (fraction means a group of representatives belonging to a party in DPRD I) from the PPP, PP, Golkar, PDI/PDKB, and PBI parties had already urged the governor to resign (fraksi PDI P and military representatives were still reticent); on 13 June 2000, the Dayak Adat Council, the Malay Adat Council and the Tiong Hoa/Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan also demanded the governor’s resignation. The Governor quickly consolidated his supporters, in order to counter the resignation demands. The Forum Komunikasi Kristen Protestan Indonesia (FKKI, or Communication Forum for Indonesian Christians/Protestants)31 voiced its support for

31 Governor Maj. Gen. Aspar Aswin, a former Cold War anti-insurgency warrior, must have been familiar with the US-taught tactics for urban physical and social suppression against political enemies, through the use of civilian organizations to

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the Governor on 13 June 2000, though this was later refuted by Pontianak Archbishop Monsignor Hieronymus Bumbun as well as the head of the United Churches of Indonesia (Father. Drs. Junias Lantik) who asked Christians not to join politics gone astray. From June to July 2000, two local newspapers were full with advertisements claiming support for the embattled governor from sometimes obscure, non-existent or untraceable personalities. These included the so-called martial arts group “Ya Qahar”, the Indonesian Legion of War Veterans, Communities Concerned for Reformasi and Legal Supremacy, the Warlords of the Majang Desa War and Warlords of the Dayak Tribes32. The anti-governor groups, including the fraksi in the DPRD I and both Oevang Oeray and Professor Mahmud Akil (the rector of a local state university), rather strangely advertised their objection to the incumbent governor’s leadership in local newspapers. But the largest anti-governor group was made up of university students united together from many groups including, Muslims, Christians and Reformasi supporters. As soon as the advertisement ink had dried, both anti and pro-governor groups sent delegations to convey their messages to President Abdurrahman Wahid in

maintain security at the grass-roots level. For comparison, Col. Sudsai Hasdin, a former head of Thailand’s Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), founded the Red Gaurs (Red Bull), which recruited heavily from the unemployed and from vocational and technical students, who felt both threatened by the economic downturn in the post-1973 period, and were also embittered at being treated as inferiors by university students (Glassman 2000: 68). The pattern of recruiting the outcasts or the young, insecure people, or insignificant members of certain organizations appeared in Indonesian politics after 1967. The youth organizations, with “Forum Komunikasi” at the beginning of their full name, were usually sponsored by the state or military. This “FKKI” did not represent the Christians/Protestants of West Kalimantan; in fact the head of the Persatuan Gereja Gereja Indonesia (the United Churches of Indonesia), qualified FKKI’s support for the Governor by asking Church-related organizations to back off from politics. 32 On 20 July 2000 (Erma S. Ranik et. al 2000: 26) appeared an interesting, if not ludicrous, one-quarter page advertisement of support for the Governor, signed by logically deceased warlords (Majang Desa War took place in the mid-1945, shortly before the Independence Day of 17 August 1945) such as Panglima Gayo (Panglima meant Warlord; Gayo is a highland of West Sumatera), Panglima Kilat Junior, Panglima Sidong Junior, Panglima Togo and Panglima Naga Junior (the Dayaks never use the term “Junior” for their children). The advertisement refuted the words from Jacobus F. Layang, the head of the Dayak Council, who demanded the governor’s resignation.

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Jakarta. Obviously sick of this game of words, on 28 June 2000 in front of an anti- governor delegation33, the President promised to sign a Decision Letter (Surat Keputusan), in order to replace Governor Aspar Aswin (Kompas 30 June 2000). The President wanted the delegation to be patient, because such a letter might take time. That letter never appeared from the President, who was unable to sustain his presidency for another month34. As a result, the battle of words in the province of West Kalimantan dragged on. After a quiet interlude from August to early September, on 6 September 2000 the anti-governor student movements sent their envoys to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Menteri Dalam Negeri), in order to demand that the Minister withdraw his support for such an untrustworthy governor. The next day, 150 students, youth groups, NGO activists and public figures protested against the Governor in front of the DPRD I building in Pontianak (Bambang Bider 2000: 14). The Governor immediately sent his own envoys to Jakarta, to support his staying on as governor. He also traveled extensively to districts like Pontianak, Sanggau, Sekadau and Sintang, in order to gather political support and on the pretext of “monitoring provincial projects

33 The delegation was made of some members of DPRD I West Kalimantan and some public figures from Dayak, Malay and Chinese groups. The delegation begged for president’s interference because the DPRD I sessions to discuss the impeachment process against the governor had been disturbed by terrors and intimidations (perpetrators unstated). In an interview later, the vice head of DPRD I West Kalimantan (Silvanus Sungkalang) suggested a caretaker from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to prepare an election for new governor who must be putra daerah (natives of West Kalimantan) (Erma S. Ranik et. al 2000: 27). 34 President Abdurrahman Wahid was dethroned by the MPR (People Consultative Assembly) on 23 July 2000 and automatically replaced by vice president Megawati Sukarnoputri. Previously, without a nod from the MPR, President Wahid assigned the Vice Commander of National Police Force, Gen. Chaerudddin Ismail, as the ad interim Commander of National Police Force to replace the DPR-supported Gen. Suroyo Bimantoro. A Special Session for MPR (DPR members compose one half of MPR) planned for 21 August 2000 was suggested to be advanced to be done on 21 July 2000 to discuss, among others, the controversial decision of the President. In anger the President announced a Presidential Decree (Dekrit Presiden) at 1 a.m of 23 July 2000 to freeze the MPR and Golkar Party; and planned another general election in 12 months. Only 9 hours after the Decree’s announcement, the Military Headquarters through its Supreme Commander Com. Widodo AS openly refused to follow it. A Special Session of MPR decided on 23 July 2000 to dismiss the President Abdurrahman Wahid.

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and asking people’s opinion about development”. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Maj. Gen. Surjadi Sudirdja, also a retired military officer, showed his support for this fellow military officer (Aspar Aswin), by regretting the move from DPRD I to oust the governor, by using the mechanism of an annual progress report (Laporan Pertanggungjawaban). In conclusion, nothing happened until the next governor was elected (using the same old methods which militated against the political interests of the Dayaks) between October 2002 and January 2003. A clash erupted again on 9 November 2000 between the police force and the students (based in Tanjungpura State University, the nearest university to the governor’s office). Around 40 policemen forced their way into the Faculty of Agriculture, in order to free three policemen (one of whom had a rank of superintendent) who were allegedly kidnapped and taken as hostages by the students, in order to negotiate for the release of four students taken into police custody following a previous anti-governor student protest on 8 October 2000. Shots fired during the forced entry wounded five students and destroyed 100 student motorcycles, plus one car (Thomas Tion and Erma S. Ranik 2000: 4-7). The Rector of the University, Prof. Purnamawati Kusmiba, condemned the incident and demanded the proper punishment for the policemen who attacked unarmed students and destroyed both students’ and state properties. The second event, immediately after the unprecedented episode of Malay against Madurese conflict and to some extent related, was the general election of 1999. The many comments, visits and assistance offered to the Madurese refugees from Sambas, told a revealing tale about how high the national party-based [Javanese, Muslims] politicians valued the votes of these refugees, known as pious Muslims. The basic struggle of this post-Suharto and post-New Order general election remained the same as that in the 1955 general election. The main players were the Islamic parties, the Nationalist parties and the same old former party of the New Order (Golkar party). The attempts by the pro-reformasi groups, including the subaltern groups, to oust the remnants of the New Order, however, proved to be futile if done through formal politics and the general election. Like private companies, the contending parties also targeted certain parts of the West Kalimantan population according to each campaign baseline. The

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Indonesian Democratic Party of Megawati Sukarnoputri (244 names of its 575 candidates for members of the People Representative Board were non-Muslims) felt really at home in West Kalimantan, with Christian Dayaks as almost half of its population. The Islamic parties quickly resorted to their old methods of using religious tenets to call Muslims voters not to choose “non-Muslim” parties, one of which was led by a woman. The Golkar Party, with its leading members still conveniently sat as functionaries in state institutions despite its ‘political sins’, tried to woo the Chinese (who contributed 2.1 million votes nation-wide in the 1997 general election) to join the Golkar banner, by showing off the government decision (Presidential Decree No. 4 of 5 May 1999) to free the Chinese from the obligation to obtain a letter of proof of Indonesian citizenship from the Department of Internal Affairs, a notorious means of extortion against them. Smaller parties tried ethnic-based or religious-based primordialist themes to woo voters belonging to certain ethnic or religious groups. The general election, as it turned out, was a simple game of arithmetic, economic calculation and power abuse35. The parties with large pecuniary resources won. The five biggest seat-winning parties, parties that won 90.26 percent of the seats (total seats for People Representative Board was 462), were the same old groups. Megawati’s Democratic Party got 35.68 million votes, Golkar won 23.74 million votes and the main Islamic parties (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, Partai Persatuan Pembangunan and Partai Amanat Nasional) achieved 13.33 million votes, 11.32 million votes and 7.52 million votes respectively (the total vote was 105.78 million). The West Kalimantan chapter of Partai Kristen Demokrat (the Democratic Christian Party), which boasted that 80 percent of its candidates for People Representative Board were Dayaks, only collected 216,675

35 The Vice Leader of Golkar’s Consultative Board, A.A. Baramuli (a staunch supporter of the incumbent president B.J. Habibie for shared ethnical and political interests) was reported to have donated IDR 100,000 (USD 11.1) to each village head in Minahasa district (North Sulawesi), during the Golkar campaign period (Kompas, 12 June 1999 cited in Sulistyo and Kadar 2000: 21). An Election Watch Committee from an NGO (Walhi), found that in 21 districts of West Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, the violation of election rules was classified into three categories: money politics (with half of the cases related to Golkar), intimidation and power abuse (Sulistyo and Kadar 2000: 26). In some districts of Lampung province (South Sumatra), the Golkar Party gave fertilizers to its farmer supporters (Berita Buana 20 May 1999).

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votes nationwide. The West Kalimantan chapter of the Partai Bhinneka Tunggal Ika36 (PBI), surprisingly became one of the big five in West Kalimantan (with 364,291 votes nationwide; 121,950 votes in West Kalimantan out of a total 1,742,950 votes available), allegedly because it was priming the Chinese bosses as its candidates for People Representative Board membership.37 The counting system used to decide the number of seats for each party was heavily biased toward the big parties. The general election committee used the “provincial quota” (the number of votes per number of seats for each of the 27 provinces) to set the minimum number of votes needed for a party to get one seat. From 500 seats up for grabs in the national People Representative Assembly/Board, the military got an automatic 38 seats, which left 462 seats for party representatives. Only 342 seats, however, were eligible to be fought over under the “provincial quotas” (these were different from one province to another, because the election committee arbitrarily decided the allocated seats for each province according, loosely based on its population and the number of government units); the remaining 120 seats were to be divided according to the “vote remainder” system (IFES 1999: iv). This arbitrariness appears very clearly, when the numbers of seats for West Kalimantan (1,742,526 voters, 9 seats) is compared to those for South Kalimantan (1,486,031 voters, 11 seats) or East Kalimantan (1,134,214 voters, 7 seats).

36 Bhinneka Tunggal Ika is the Sanskritized version of “Divided but One”, as written in the state ideology (Garuda Pancasila). 37 In West Kalimantan, Golkar won with a slight margin over Megawati’s Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDIP). From the valid 1,742,526 votes, Golkar won 511,513 votes (29.4 percent, 3 seats), while the PDI gained 401,543 votes (23.3 percent, 2 seats). The rest of the total of 9 seats for West Kalimantan’s representatives on the People’s Representative Board were divided fairly among four parties: Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (Islam), Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (led by Suryadi, a nationalist), Partai Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (nationalist) and Partai Demokrasi Kasih Bangsa (Christian). Supported by some district leaders left behind from Golkar’s golden era, Golkar managed to steal a victory in West Kalimantan. Anomalies were found in the districts whose leaders supported Golkar. For example, in Sambas district, Election Watch found 11,000 ballot papers more than the total number of registered voters (Thomas Tion 1999: 11); while in Sintang, an extra 3,000 ballot papers were found (Thomas Tion and Maria Goreti 1999: 8).

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But what really debilitated the small parties was the method used to manage the “vote remainder38”, or the votes that remained after all the votes for each party had been divided into the pre-set “provincial quotas.” The big parties that tended to win a large portion of votes got all the remaining seats, because their “vote remainder” tended also to be large. The Golkar Party in West Kalimantan for example, won 29.4 percent of the votes (511,513 out of total 1,724,526 votes) and thus got 2 seats, because the total vote for Golkar was 2.64 times that of the provincial quota there. Only three parties in West Kalimantan managed to collect enough votes to get 5 seats (2 seats for Golkar, 2 for PDI P and 1 for PPP) through the “provincial quota” system, leaving 4 seats. These remaining seats were divided among the parties that gathered the highest four values of the “vote remainder”, which were Golkar, PDI, PBI and the PDKB. Other small parties that pushed ethnic-based primordialist issues fared badly in West Kalimantan. All in all, the electoral system produced a nationally and provincially skewed result which was biased toward the big parties: the top seven parties that swept 342 of the seats allocated for “provincial quotas” also grabbed 94 out of the 120 seats allocated through “vote remainder” counting (IFES 1999: v).

38 Another system considered beside the “vote remainder” system was the “stembus accords” system, where the holders of the remaining votes were allowed to divide or grant those votes (useless anyway, if they were insufficient to get a seat) to the other parties of their own choice. The parties that got fewer votes than the provincial quota, could also put (depending to their agreement or “accord” in Dutch language, where the title stembus accords came from) their votes together until there were enough to get a seat. The General Election Committee finally rejected this system on 30 August 1999 (IFES 1999: ii) for the lack of clarity of its rules about accords and the shortage of time they had.

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Table 4.1 West Kalimantan Results in the 1999 General Election Political Total Votes Provincial Vote Seats By Total Parties Quota Remainder Vote Seats (193,614 Remainder votes for 1 seat) Golkar 511,513 2 124,285 1 3 PDI P 405,543 2 18,315 2 PPP 209,792 1 16,178 1 PDI 131,909 131,909 1 1 PBI 121,950 121,950 1 1 PDKB 56,699 56,699 1 1 PAN 47,734 47,734 PKB 47,098 47,098 PBB 23,327 23,327 PKP 17,870 17,870 PP 15,534 15,534 PNU 11,172 11,172 PNI Supeni 10,483 10,483 PK 10,250 10,250 PKD 9,993 9,993 PPIIM 9,653 9,653 IPKI 9,255 9,255 PNI FM 7,422 7,422 PNI MM 6,509 6,509 PR 6,138 6,138 PAY 5,899 5,899 Others 66,783 66,783 Total 1 ,742,526 5 774,456 4 9 Notes: The provincial quota for West Kalimantan was 193,614 (valid votes divided by allocated seats) (Source: IFES 1999: 14). The arbitrary nature of the national electoral system also appeared at the provincial level. The national results (Table 3.5) for the allocation of seats for parties’ representatives in the [National] Peoples Representative Assembly or DPR were also used to decide the seats allocated for parties’ representatives in the DPRD I, or [Provincial] Peoples Representative Assembly. According the allocated numbers of seats from Table 3.5, the number of seats for the Provincial Peoples Representative

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Assembly should have been 45 seats, because one seat for the National DPR was valued as five seats in DPRD I. However, this was not the case because the seats for West Kalimantan DPRD I were divided, again arbitrarily, among the districts (5 seats for Pontianak Municipalities, 12 for Pontianak District, 11 seats for Sambas, 6 for Sanggau, 6 for Sintang, 3 for Kapuas Hulu, 6 for Ketapang and 6 for military representatives; all in all 55 seats) (Thomas Tion and Maria Goreti 1999: 8). This 55-seat DPRD I of West Kalimantan was not free from bias against the Dayaks. In its decision in late August 1999 to pick five representatives of West Kalimantan to be the members of the National Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR, or Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, supposedly the highest state institution according to the 1945 Constitution)39, the DPRD I only picked one “real” [Christian] Dayak. The other three were Malays and Chinese40. This choice thus violated the previous agreement within the ranks of the DPRD I, that the composition for the five representatives from West Kalimantan on the Jakarta-based People Consultative Assembly, should be 2 Malay, 2 Dayak and 1 Chinese, representing the composition of the population in the province. On 6 September 1999, around 70 people (probably Dayak students and non-student others) in three buses ran amok and destroyed the DPRD I building (causing an estimated IDR 250 million in damages). From 6 to 11 September 1999, the situation grew tenser as the Malay groups also joined in to resist the Dayak groups’ demand for a new plenary session.

39 The membership of this supposedly ‘highest institution in the country’ was taken from 500 members of the National Peoples Representative Assembly (462 members through election, 38 handpicked from the military) and another 500 members (handpicked from outstanding members of Indonesian society from 27 provinces). That this institution was vulnerable to political manipulation (as the Sukarno and Suharto cases showed) was due to the fact that less than half of its members were chosen through election. If the incumbent government party won the election, this “less than half” would be qualified further to become “fewer than less than half.” 40 The result in late August 1999 of the plenary session of the 55-seat DPRD I West Kalimantan (with 18 members from Dayak groups) was Oesman Sapta Odang and Dr Chairil Effendi (Malay), Zainudin Isman and Ikot Rinding (Dayaks) and Budiono Tan (Chinese). The problem with the Dayaks was that Zainudin Isman was a Muslim [Malayized] Dayak and thus not a ‘real’ Dayak. The other problem was that M. Ikot Rinding (Dayak) was a Golkar-proposed candidate, not the Adat Council-proposed one. The Dayak protesters (students and ordinary people) wanted different names to Zainudin Isman and M. Ikot Rinding.

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The ensuing riots claimed tens of wounded and also one security officer was shot (some of the rioters brought rudimentary home-made firearms). On 11 September, the DPRD I annulled naming the composition for the province representatives (utusan daerah) until there was a new plenary session. The members simply took off the name Zainudin Isman and replaced him with Dr Barnabas Simin (a Dayak proposed by the Dayak Adat Council). One unnamed member of DPRD I acknowledged that the votes of the 18 Dayaks members in the DPRD I were split into four Dayak candidates (Erma S. Ranik and Margareta Tri W. 1999: 32): Dr. Piet Herman Abik, Thambun Anyang, L. Majun and Dr. Barnabas Simin. As a result, only one ‘real’ Dayak, Dr. Barnabas Simin, was chosen. The other Dayak, M. Ikot Rinding, was a front for Golkar’s interests. If the struggle of the loosely led subaltern groups within national formal politics and at the general election failed, the same struggle at the provincial level and in the form of the governor election ended in a similar vein. When the first process for candidate registration within the whole process of election for the Governor of West Kalimantan was opened in October 2002, 24 candidates for governor and 19 for vice governor appeared on the list (Erma S. Ranik, Bambang Bider and T. Kusmiran 2002: 8). These names however, needed further pruning through a qualification process (from mid-October to mid-November 2002), carried out by the DPRD I and its seven fraksis. The result, to the disappointment of the Dayaks, put all the Dayak candidates as candidates for vice governor only (see Table 4.2). To vent their disappointment mobs of Dayaks created road blocks using logs, at midnight on 18 November 2002 in Pak Kumbang sub-district Landak, to paralyze the transportation system to and from Pontianak (Bambang Bider and D. Siyok 2002: 13). After an 18-hour traffic stalemate, the head of Landak District Dr Cornelis solved the stalemate late in the afternoon of 19 November 2002. On 12 December 2002, the governor election, using the voting mechanism of the 54 members of DPRD I (one member deceased) in West Kalimantan, began. Rumors of a planned riot by Dayak groups did not stop the two-round voting procession. On the first vote to find the two pairs of candidates with the highest votes, Gusti Syamsumin with M. Kaphat and

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Usman Djafar with LH Kadir emerged victorious with 19 and 21 votes respectively (Djawari- Rudy and Henry Usman-Michael Oendoen claimed 6 and 8 votes).

Table 4.2 Candidate List from 7 Fraksis in DPRD I West Kalimantan on 18 November 2002, Governor Election 2002-2003. Fraksi Candidates Fraksi Governor-Vice Members Golkar 1. Gusti Syamsumin – M. Kaphat (*) 14 2. Akil Mochtar – Andreas Lani(*) PDI P 1. Djawari – Rudi Alamsyahrum 10 2. Erdin Odang – Moses Alep(*) PBI 1. Henry Usman – Michael Oendoen(*) 4 2. Usman Djafar – LH Kadir(*) PPP 1. Usman Djafar – LH Kadir 6 PDI/PDKB 1. Gusti Syamsumin – M. Kaphat (*) 6 2. Agus Salim – Suprianus Pian(*) Military/Police none 6 Pembaharuan none 7 Note: (*) are Dayak candidates; the rest are Malays. (Source: Bambang Bider and D. Siyok 2002: 12).

The second round was won by the Usman Djafar-L.H. Kadir pairing (see Appendix J for L.H. Kadir’s biography) with 32 votes (10 votes from PBI and PPP and 22 votes from the other fraksis) against 22 votes for Gusti Syamsumin and M. Kaphat (14 votes from Golkar, 6 from PDI/PDKB and only 2 from other fraksis). Students were not happy with this result. Solmadapar (Solidarity of Concerned Students for Reformasi) through its founder Siswanto, SH refused to acknowledge this pairing of Governor-Vice Governor, because it was elected by 54 people representatives with a dirty track record (Equator 14 December 2002 cited in D. Siyok (2003a: 20). To heal the wound nevertheless, the Dayak publication Kalimantan Review (D. Siyok 2003b: 24) issued an article to show that Usman Djafar, the new governor, was a putera Senganan (child of Senganan or downstream

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[Malayized] Dayak) who was born in Sekadau sub-district. This new governor, however (refer to Appendix K for his short biography), was living proof of the amazing capability of the remnants of the New Order’s crony capitalism to survive a new political situation. In the 2004 general election the Golkar Party, which was the very same party that had supported Suharto’s authoritarian rule for three decades (from the end of 1969 to the end of 1998), won the national result with 24.48 million votes out of 113.46 million votes (Megawati’s party PDI P, only won 21.02 million votes) in the vote to decide the membership of the national Peoples Representative Assembly (DPR). These two winners, however, failed to bring their respective presidential candidates to the presidency, due to a clear lack of credibility. The results of this general election represented a phenomenon called “de-alignment politics” (Asfar 2006: 122) that showed the following symptoms: a decline in the voters turn-out rate41, an increase in swing voters’ numbers42, the rise of the third party43 and an increase of independent voters.

41 The average rate of no turn-out among the registered voters in big cities (Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, and Bandung) was around 30 percent. The total national number of non-voting eligible voters on 5 May 2004 was 24.74 percent (compared to only 10.40 percent in the 1999 general election). The voters and masses of “supporters” during the campaign also became more rational; they attended campaigns of parties that offered higher material remuneration (Asfar 2006: 123). 42 Some national polls showed that voters who picked certain parties in the 1999 general election voted for different parties in the 2004 general election. Picking randomly 6,155 voters at 1,603 vote counting stations, a survey in Jakarta by LP3ES found that 8 percent of previous voters for the PDI P of Megawati, swung their votes to a relatively new party, Partai Demokrat (led by Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who served in Megawati’s cabinet but was later ostracized during Megawati’s presidency from 2001 to 2004). Another party (Partai Keadilan Sosial, or Social Justice Party) that had tried to build a “clean and pious” image among its party representatives for public display gained a significant amount of swing votes from voters who had supported the other parties in 1999 (Asfar 2006: 124-125). 43 These parties were the Partai Keadilan Sosial (Social Justice Party) and Partai Demokrat (PD); this last party even had their leader voted as the new president. The voters, who had suffered deep disappointment from the poor achievements of the last two presidents (Abdurrahman Wahid of PKB and Megawati of PDI P), turned their sympathetic sights on Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (another Suharto protégé), the ostracized figure within the ranks of the serving ministers of both presidents. Counting on this auspicious turn of events the Partai Demokrat, a brain child of Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (or SBY), forged new successful myths of General SBY

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However, one thing remained the same as previous elections; that the parties with large financial pockets always prevailed. This had been taking place as long as the system was set up to the advantage of the rich parties. The “new” system set up for the 2004 general election, even further militated against the parties with mediocre financial capacities - those unable to launch vote-luring campaigns. The voters in the 2004 general election had to vote five times: for the DPR, for the DPRD (provincial level), for the DPD (Provincial Representative Assembly, replacing the old form of Peoples Consultative Assembly, or MPR), for the President and for the Vice- President. If previously the rich parties had concentrated their financial might on gaining the votes for the DPR only, this time they had to spread their financial allocation across five aspects of the election. This new system finally broke the back of the smaller, poorer parties. In West Kalimantan, Megawati Sukarnoputri remained a popular figure for the President (and was one out of five candidates for voters to vote for) for reasons related to the ethnic-related events that took place during and after Suharto’s fall in 1998. From 2,013,134 valid votes out of 2,036,227 registered votes in West Kalimantan, the Megawati-Hasyim pairing collected a convincing 821,577, or 40.81 percent of the votes (E. Ngiuk 2004b: 40). The Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono- Jusuf Kalla pairing gained only 477,724, or 23.73 percent of the votes. According to Dr Masiun, an activist of the Pancur Kasih Foundation, the simple-minded Dayak voters were impressed by the TV campaign of Megawati’s PDI P which showed her with the Pope, John Paul II (Paus Paulus Yohanes II in the Indonesian tongue). Thus they must have believed that Megawati would be a tolerant president. The other fortuitous factor was the stable price of rubber during the short presidency of Megawati (mid-2000 to 2004, when Megawati the incumbent vice- president, replaced the ousted President Abdurrahman Wahid). The leader of

as a “handsome, polite, patient, intelligent, careful but firm person”. (Asfar 2006: 125). Claiming the support of the winning Golkar Party by bringing the old figure of the New Order rank (Golkar party leader) by the name of Muhammad Jusuf Kalla (MJK), a politician-cum-businessman, as his Vice-President, General SBY ascended to the presidency with ease. Meanwhile, Partai Keadilan Sosial displayed a rank and file of “clean and trustworthy” politicians and staged benevolent acts of charity every time a calamity occurred.

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Megawati’s Partai Demokrasi Indonesia PDIP in the West Kalimantan chapter was a popular Dayak figure (Drs. Cornelis, MH) who also served as the district head of Landak district. The campaign mechanisms of the PDI P Party stretched to the lowest levels of society, much more so than those of Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s new party, Partai Demokrat (E. Ngiuk 2004: 43). Explaining the popularity of Megawati among the Chinese of West Kalimantan, Setiawan Liem, a Chinese politician in the Provincial Peoples Representative Assembly, believed that during her short presidency Megawati enlarged the space of freedom for the Chinese, which the Chinese then wanted to preserve. The old parties not only dominated in the elections for president and vice- president, they also swapped most seats of the provincial People Representative Assembly (55 seats) and national People Representative Assembly (10 seats); the Dayaks grabbed two seats on the Jakarta-based Provincial Representative Council (out of 4 seats). The old powers in West Kalimantan, however, struck back in a pure form and without a significant move appearing from the “third party”. West Kalimantan got a share of four members on the Provincial Representative Assembly (Jakarta-based), 10 members on the Peoples Representative Assembly (Jakarta-based), 55 members on the Provincial Peoples Representative Assembly (West Kalimantan-based) and 395 members for the Municipal/Districts Representative Assemblies (for 12 municipalities and districts)44. The Dayaks, however, were still under-represented in a “parliamentary game” that they did not really know how to play.

44 These are Pontianak Municipal (40 seats, the three dominating parties: Golkar:PDIP:PPP=9 seats:7 seats:5 seats), Singkawang Municipal (25 seats, PDIP:Golkar:PPP=9:5:2), Pontianak District (45 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PPP=11:8:7), Bengkayang District (25 seats, Golkar:PDIP:P.Demokrat=5:5:2), Sambas District (40 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PPP=10:10:4), Landak District (35 seats, PDIP:Golkar:PSI=8:6:4), Sanggau District (35 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PKPB=9:7:4)), Sekadau District (25 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PKPB=6:3:1), Sintang District (35 seats, Golkar:PDIP:P. Merdeka=8:6:3), Melawi District (25 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PAN=4:4:4), Kapuas Hulu District (25 seats, Golkar: Partai Merdeka:PKPI=9:3:3), and Ketapang District (40 seats, Golkar:PDIP:PPP=15:7:5). To illustrate the remuneration for these seats, the monthly basic salary for the Head of the Provincial Peoples Representative Assembly was IDR 17,181,250 (around USD

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Therefore, the power game was also played at a more intimate level among the grassroots movement, where the subalterns, solidified and stiffened after long-term oppression, fared better. The big parties however, needed votes to justify their tainted existence after the fall of Suharto, the founder of the prevailing Golkar Party. To collect as many votes as possible, the parties needed to expand their constituencies among the two largest indigenous groups: the Dayaks and the Malays. After the banishment of all primordialist based political parties, the Dayaks had been traditionally casting their votes to Christian or Nationalist parties. The Malays similarly had been known as staunch supporters of Islamic parties. The Golkar Party, previously known to manipulate members of public service or government agencies to collect winning votes, was now hard-pressed to encroach into the traditional niche of religious and nationalist parties. A lack of development (i.e. infrastructures for communication) in the province provided the means of negotiation between the Golkar Party and the Dayak groups. (The Golkar party’s encroachments into the coastal bases of the Islamic Parties, where public facilities were comparatively better than those of the hinterlands, faced stiff rebuttal from the well-established Islamic Parties.) There were good reasons for the villages lying between Pontianak and Tayan sub-district to be the ideal candidates for creation of new constituencies for the shaken Golkar Party. The relatively short distance (100 km) between the capital Pontianak and Tayan sub-district was still largely unaffected by Islamic Parties (although Nationalist Party chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri was popular there, thanks to her campaigns using Christian notables) and the villages had been accessible from urban centers even since the foundation of the Sultanate of Pontianak in 1771. More importantly, the Golkar Party had a previously minor vote-getter officer (a Dayak), who had been actively campaigning for the Golkar Party for decades, in one of the villages lying along the old Pontianak to Tayan seasonal road (only accessible for public transportation during the dry season).

1,909). No Dayak representatives appeared for the Pontianak Municipal and Pontianak District after the 2004 general election.

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Having learned about the “success” of the Dayaks in evicting the Madurese from their lands with impunity in 1997, the Malays of Sambas District mobilized their own retaliatory forces to copy the same “success” story in early 1999. The unattended plight of the Madurese refugees fuelled a chain reaction anti-governor student movement to oust the governor. This movement was later joined by the majority members of the Provincial Peoples Representative Board, the Dayak Adat Council, the Malay Adat Council, the Tiong Hoa/Chinese Adat Council and the rector of a local state university. The sudden turn of events at national level (the quick impeachment of President Wahid by the Army and Peoples Consultative Board on 23 July 2000) slowed down this anti-governor movement. In the 1999 general election, taking place almost at the same time as the anti-governor movement, the old Golkar Party maintained its slight margin over Megawati’s Democratic Party, through the support of district leaders. A rather significant change, however, took place during the 2003 governor election when all pairs of candidates for governor/vice-governor were typically Malay-Dayak pairs, which signified the superiority of Malay candidates over the Dayak ones. The general election in 2004 repeated the success of the old Golkar Party over Megawati’s Democratic Party. Especially the Dayak villages around the provincial capital Pontianak got attention from the remnants of the weakened Golkar Party and the other big parties, as part of their campaigns to rebuild their electoral base around the province capital.

//////////////////////////////////////4.6 Summary Intermittent crises rendered the oil-dependent and corrupt regime increasingly incapable of dealing effectively with the “louder” voice of the Dayak groups. The irrepressible voice of the Dayaks was strengthened by international NGOs, who also had access to the political decision makers, as a provider for the hard pressed regime. The historical creation and perpetuation of the marking of subalternized groups, between the ‘natives’ and the ‘settlers’ and through colonial policies, had been sustained throughout the post-colonial and post-Cold War eras. More recent developments at the village level, however, brought the rather similar fate of peasantization and de-peasantization processes among the natives and the settlers in the Dayak villages. Despite the remnants of differentiation existing among the

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villagers and between the natives and the settlers, their agricultural practices grew in the same direction as the sudden population pressure created by the road project increased the market value of the land resources. Aside from emulating the Dayaks’ rice-plots and rubber-plots livelihood, the Madurese settler groups also imitated the formers’ strategy of gaining a remittance from non-agricultural jobs. The wind of change in 1989 not only reached Eastern Europe and the Balkans area but also spread to Indonesia. International NGOs gained an aura of respectability, in regions with oppressive leaders. The funds they received to increase the proliferation of national and local NGOs, however, hampered the natural growth of local NGOs. NGO funding agencies that supported both sides of a struggle (NGOs and state-based agencies) had to accommodate both sides, sometimes through questionable settlements. Three decades of direct rule by the Suharto regime have left a deep environmental scar for the indigenous groups who relied on natural resources, notably the Dayaks. Statistics on public service availability speak volumes about the failures of the regime to return some parts of the revenues gained from resource extraction, for the welfare of the indigenous groups. Having learned about the “success” of the Dayaks in evicting some of the Madurese settlers from Dayak lands with impunity in 1997, the Malays of Sambas District, notoriously ‘cowards’ who usually swallowed humiliation by the Madurese, copied the same “success” story in early 1999. The unattended plight of the Madurese refugees invigorated a student movement to oust the Governor. Joined by the majority members of the Provincial Peoples Representative Board, the Dayak Adat Council, Malay Adat Council, Tiong Hoa/Chinese Adat Council and the Rector of a local state university, this campaign died down after the quick impeachment of President Wahid by the Army and People Consultative Board on 23 July 2000. In the next 1999 general election, the old Golkar Party maintained its slight advantage over Megawati’s Democratic Party. Significant change, however, took place during the 2003 governor election when all pairs of candidates for governor/vice-governor were typically Malay-Dayak pairs, or the end of the era of Javanese governors. The general election in 2004 saw the repeated success of the old Golkar Party, at the cost of Megawati’s Democratic Party. The next chapter will argue that the background of competition

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based on the native-settlers dichotomy and its all consequences, had been affecting the Dayak villages of West Kalimantan ever since their earliest inceptions. In two villages founded by the Dayaks as production sites for global and national products since the colonial time (1771), this competition has been even clearer. Even after the dictator Suharto, who manipulated ‘democracy’ and ‘economic development’ jargons shrewdly from 1965 until his downfall in 1998, left the political scene in 1998, the strong old parties have still successfully utilized this dichotomy among their indigenous electorate. The indigenous groups continue to use this dichotomization as part of the repertoire in their means of negotiation.