Jacqueline A.C. Vel Uma Politics An ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006 UMA POLITICS V E R H A N D E L I N G E N V A N H E T K O N I N K L I J K I N S T I T U U T VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 260 jacqueline a.c. vel UMA POLITICS An ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006 KITLV Press Leiden 2008 Published by: KITLV Press Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands website: www.kitlv.nl e-mail: kitlvpress@kitlv.nl KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Cover: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp ISBN 978 90 6718 324 6 © 2008 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xv I Introduction 1 Sumbanese election campaign 1 Making democracy work 3 Outline and arguments 6 Sumba in Indonesian context 7 Neo-patrimonialism in a democratic state 7 Widening world of the local elite 10 State, power and the forms of capital 10 Tradition and authority 12 Space and time 13 Individuals and networks 14 Political class 16 Uma economy and Uma politics 18 II Sumba and the state 21 Sumba: geography and subsistence 23 Population 28 History of state formation on Sumba 30 State and Sumbanese Christianity 35 State as career: Umbu Djima and the forms of capital 41 The state as bureaucratic procedures 47 The state as economic sector 49 Social cleavage 51 III Tradition, leadership and power 55 Traditional cultural capital 56 Ethnicity and traditional political organization 60 Traditional leadership 62 Legitimacy and adat 64 Traditional concepts of power 67 Power resources 70 Conclusions 72 Village 74 IV Legal pluralism and village politics 81 Village politics 83 Legal pluralism 85 Forms of capital 87 Adat in Lawonda 91 The state in the village 93 The Christian church in Lawonda 95 The development organisation 97 Umbu Hapi versus Pak Vincent 100 Clash of paradigms or legal pluralism 106 Village justice in West Sumba in 2004 108 V Regime change and democratization 113 Democracy and constitutional liberalism 114 Demands of Reformasi 116 Changing local regime 117 Uncertainty after May 1998 118 Capital town 121 VI Violence in Waikabubak 125 Explaining communal violence 127 Preparation: master narratives, previous antagonisms and crisis discourse 129 Narrative one: clan rivalries 129 Narrative two: violence, warfare and violent rituals in West Sumba 130 Narrative three: local political rivalry 132 Narrative four: national crisis discourse 133 Trigger incident 135 Transformation into communal conflict 136 Elevation into a wider discourse 137 The aftermath 138 Explanation and interpretation 140 Explanation one: criminal incident 140 Explanation two: part of local elite’s political struggle 141 Explanation three: part of long series of endemic riots 142 Waikabubak as case of ‘post-Suharto violence in Indonesia’ 143 Consequences for the 1999 bupati elections 146 VII Growing political public 149 International development aid for political reform 150 Civil society on Sumba 152 Adat revival 156 In touch with the rest of the world 158 Radio and newspapers 161 Voices of the political public 163 Contents vi Contents Small town 166 VIII Creating a new district 171 Decentralisation and pemekaran 171 Economic stakes 174 Historical arguments for pemekeran 175 Cultural and religious arguments 180 Rhetoric and theatre 181 Social forces behind pemekaran 185 Overseas Sumbanese 185 Local campaign leaders 189 Well-educated but unemployed youths 190 Women 191 Campaigning for Central Sumba 191 Conclusions 200 IX Elections 201 Local election experience 201 Democratic elections in 1999 203 Parliament elections in 2004 204 Presidential elections 211 Pilkada 212 West Sumba’s pilkada candidates 214 Umbu Bintang: the performing prince 219 Election rally in Kabunduk, Central Sumba 221 Symbols, rhetoric and ‘the angry man’ 225 Pote Leba: the intellectual bureaucrat 227 Golkar, bureaucrats and businessmen 229 The result 232 Conclusion 234 X Conclusions 237 The local context 238 Capital and leadership 240 Political identity 242 Political class, political public and the tani class 243 Democratization and Uma politics 246 Glossary 249 Abbreviations and acronyms 253 Annexes 255 Bibliography 257 Index 271 vii Introduction Preface Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is more than ‘just’ the introduction of a series of policy measures or new laws in countries previously ruled by authoritarian regimes. Instead, it is a lengthy, contextual - ized and often unpredictable process in which elements of democratic regime according to plan or theory articulate with long-established patterns of gov- ernance and politics in a specific society. This book describes that process in West Sumba, in Eastern Indonesia and asks the central question of how local leaders exploit the opportunities created by changes in the national political context and how these changes are reflected in the specific stylistic nature of Sumbanese politics. In Indonesia, on 21 May 1998 President Suharto stepped down from office, marking the start of a new period in Indonesian history in which the country would be transformed quickly into a democracy. Studies that describe the political history of this period show a sequence of the most salient features of what was first called ‘a transition to democracy’. The first studies centred on the financial crisis in 1998 and Reformasi (Budiman, Hatley and Kingsbury 1999) and concentrated on the end of the New Order and hopes for the future. The reorganization of the regime caused uncertainty regarding not only who would be in charge nationally, but also in each region or district. Governors and district heads, unsure of support from the centre and local forces, used their new freedoms of speech and organization to voice their interests and griev- ances. Moreover, the economic crisis had impoverished many families and had forced the state to restrict the number of civil servants, resulting in intensified job competition and changes in the rules governing that competition. The first three years after the demise of the New Order sadly became a period of widespread violence in Indonesia. Many instances of ‘small town wars’ (Van Klinken 2007) were described by researchers who had engaged in long-term studies of particular areas and now witnessed peaceful coexistence transform into inter-group violence. One general conclusion of these col - lected studies is that local elite had a large role in producing the violence and mobilized mass support by emphasizing religion and ethnicity. This type of political violence occurred in West Sumba’s capital town Waikabubak in x November 1998. There, Christians fought each other when ethnic sentiments were manipulated during a district power struggle. Violence not only destroyed lives and homes, but also initial optimism about democratization. Scholars dropped the term transition and focused on the actual practices of local politics in different regions. In 2000, the political discourse focused on a new development: decentralization, as it was called from a central perspective, or regional autonomy, the current term employed in Indonesian districts. The devolution of decision-making power in many domains of governance and the creation of autonomous district budgets brought a radical change for politicians and bureaucrats at the district level. Studies about the initial reactions in these districts were published in sev- eral volumes. These cases reveal an array of opportunities for local lead - ers, including the creation of new districts, a process that occurred in West Sumba. The academic volumes mentioned here are all thematically focussed and gather empirical data about various regions in Indonesia. Such comparative analysis enables thematic conclusions, but it does not connect the sequence of events in one context. From the perspective of local politics, declining author - ity of the New Order state, political violence, creating new districts and free elections are not separate subjects. This book describes this sequence and its main actors in West Sumba, presenting an ethnography of democratization. Watching the events of the last decade in West Sumba, one can see continu- ity in the persons who dominate the district political arena and in the image of the state as the main provider of salaried employment and the route to upward mobility. Conversely, changes appear in the style and direction of district politics, the increasing role of new actors like businessmen and politi- cal party board members, increased status of the office of bupati and growing public participation in politics. When I was in Sumba in 2002, I decided to write this monograph. I have advanced the subjects and arguments that I present in chapters of this book in earlier papers and articles (Vel 1992, 2001, 2007, forthcoming), but they tell much more about politics in Sumba when analysed together, in a sequence, over a longer period of time and with more background than can be included in academic articles. This was my first reason to write this book. My second motivation to write this book is presenting Sumba in academic literature differently from the image created by well known anthropological literature about this island. This book presents an analysis of local political tensions at the level of island-wide politics, rather than within the smaller world of the domain or linguistically defined ethnic group as was the case for most anthropologists who wrote about Sumba. This study, on the other hand, focuses on the interface between Indonesian national politics and modern Sumbanese political arenas, where the main players speak Bahasa Preface Preface Indonesia, are relatively well-educated, have travelled to other areas and are usually proud being both Indonesian and Sumbanese. It is this mixture or articulation used in contemporary political practice that I try to grasp and that makes this book a different study about Eastern Indonesia. I came to Sumba for the first time in July 1984. My husband and I were assigned to work for a development organization of the Christian Church of Sumba, and came to stay at least four years. As graduates of Wageningen Agricultural University we were both trained to be development experts, yet as soon as we arrived in our new home village Lawonda, we found that we were the ones in need of advice. Living in a place without facilities such as electricity, running water or wells, fuel, shops or a marketplace, we had to learn and participate in the local means of survival. Our neighbours taught us about reciprocity and the tricks of a barter economy. Meanwhile, the staff members of Propelmas, our development organization, discussed with us how our program activities could contribute to permanently improving the lives of the people in the area of central Sumba, where Propelmas was located. Much later, I wrote my dissertation about this experience and about the subjects that were most important for me at that time: The Uma-economy: indigenous economics and development work in Lawonda, Sumba (Eastern Indonesia) (Vel 1994). The chapter in this book about village politics is based on field data from the 1980s. It includes a case study and reconsiders argu - ments I advanced in an article published in 1992 (Vel 1992). Six years later in 1990, we left Sumba after a week-long farewell party organized by the people of Lawonda, who had divided themselves into all kinds of practical committees for fetching water, cutting meat, receiving guests, pounding coffee, serving drinks, et cetera, with half of the village staying in our house day and night. After such a definite farewell – with many promises to meet each other in heaven – I felt I could not come back for a long time. It took until 1998. Two major events brought me back to Sumba at that time: the end of Suharto’s rule and my new position at the University of Amsterdam. My new colleagues, Willem van Schendel, Leo Douw and Henk Schulte Nordholt, motivated me to take up research in Indonesia in the field of modern Asian history, given that in May 1998, the month in which president Suharto stepped down, a new period in Indonesian history had begun. I was deeply curious to see what had changed lasting the previous eight years on Sumba and to assess how the changes at national level affected Sumba. I returned to Sumba in November 1998, when the Asian financial crisis engrossed mass attention, but in Waikabubak, political changes, rather than the economic emergency, caused feelings of upheaval and led to mass violence in the streets of this capital town. Political changes were not the only developments that affected life in xi Preface xii Sumba. Between 1990 and 1998 the network of electricity was expanded in West Sumba, and from then on people outside the capital town could watch television. The TV programmes became increasingly informative, and after 1998, during the period of Reformasi, they included open, public discussions about local and national events and politics. Two senior staff members of Propelmas had started their own NGO and in November 1998 they orga- nized for the first time ever on Sumba a day of protest against domestic violence. These events exemplify the amazing transformation in the political climate of Anakalang, the small town close to Lawonda. In 1999, the national parliament passed the law of decentralization in Indonesia, a new political configuration of the state that would greatly influence events in Sumba. From 2001 onwards, districts like West and East Sumba would be autonomous regions, with district budgets provided by Jakarta that the district government could spend according to its own wishes. In Sumba this meant a three to fourfold increase in the local government’s budget. Two chapters in this book discuss the new opportunities provided by decentralization and their consequences. One such opportunity was the ability to create new districts. For example, a number of Sumbanese in Jakarta, Kupang and Sumba started a movement to create Central Sumba, and they dreamed about for their future kingdom. Yet, after three years of campaigning that did not bring direct success, attention flawed because the Minister of Domestic Affairs decided that all activities and decisions regard- ing new districts would be postponed until after the elections. From early 2004 until the end of 2005 local politics concentrated on the elections. Every time I visited Sumba, my friends in Anakalang, Waikabubak and Waingapu immediately updated me on these new developments. Local poli - tics had become much more exciting since the 1980s. During the New Order period, there were extremely localized politics in neighbourhoods or villages that were conducted mostly in traditional style; for example, conflicts were settled by ceremonial exchange and land issues fell in the realm of adat elders. Also during the New Order, the state was, overall, a top-down bureaucracy with flows of funds that would reach Sumba according to decisions made in Jakarta or Kupang. Since 1998, and even more since regional autonomy was effectuated and complemented by direct elections, the state has become localized and embedded in everyday society. The local elite – landed aristoc - racy, higher state officials and church leaders – of the New Order has now expanded into a larger political class. It consists of about 10 percent of the population in Sumba who earn their livelihood from state resources, through salaries or through assignments they get from government institutions, and their relatives who share their households. They have a high standard of living, and build new houses and facilities in the capital town and along the main roads of the island. The majority of the population is excluded from this Preface xiii class that controls the state’s resources, and as a result they have only very limited access to the benefits of regional autonomy. With decentralization, government policies have the potential to be adapt- ed to local circumstances. A published example of such an effort with regard to Sumba is the study by experts of the National Statistics Service to iden- tify contextualized poverty indicators (Betke and Ritonga 2004). Eight years after my dissertation was published, the book suddenly became popular in Sumba since it was one of the only academic books about the island that was potentially useful for policy makers hoping to situation their policies within a localized framework. In Waingapu, the growing number of students at the Wira Wacana Christian School of Economics (STIE Kriswina) – a branch of the Satya Wacana University in Salatiga – convinced me that the audience for books about culture, economics and politics on Sumba is increasing. This was the third reason to write this book, although I realize that the academic and foreign language will limit Sumbanese readership. The last reason is a personal debt owed to my best teacher of Sumbanese politics, Gany Wulang. He was our oldest colleague during the years in Lawonda, and had over 25 years of NGO activist experience. When I was in Anakalang in February 2003, he challenged me to start writing about what he called ‘the black economy of Sumba’. Convinced that events on Sumba could only be understood by analyzing the dynamics of the black economy, he had started to collect data and write about illegal logging, deals between police, traders and state officials, and corruption. In March 2003, he passed away and imparted the mission to write about back-stage Sumbanese poli- tics to others, including me. I hope this book begins to fulfil that mission and inspires foreign and Sumbanese scholars, state officials and activists to take up this subject and look beyond the normative, using a contextualized approach to understand and respect Sumbanese culture. Acknowledgements This book has been over 20 years in the making, if I start counting from my first field notes about power struggles and elections. So many people have contributed through their stories, comments, and conversations that it is impossible to acknowledge them all properly by name. I want to thank all who shared their thoughts and knowledge about Sumba with me during the period we lived in Lawonda, and afterwards, from 1998 until 2007. Henk Schulte Nordholt, Willem van Schendel and Leo Douw encour- aged me when I started working in their Modern Asian History group at the University of Amsterdam to continue my research on Sumba. Through many informal discussions and by co-teaching courses with me, they taught me to see events from a historical and political perspective. This made me see Sumba in a different way than when we were engaged in rural development work. I am very grateful to them. I want to thank Willem van Schendel and Mario Rutten for giving me the opportunity to do the research in Sumba which has subsequently formed the basis for writing Chapters V-VIII. Supervising Johan Bokdam for his MA thesis and field work in Sumba was one of the nicest parts of my work during the last years I worked in Amsterdam, because Johan showed great diplomatic style in his field research among parliament members in East Sumba. Thanks to him for sharing his results and analysis with me. I thank Frans Hüsken for asking me to be one of Argo Twikromo’s co- promotors. Argo’s research in East Sumba deepened my knowledge of a very traditional part of the island. Argo turned out to be a great colleague, a Sumba enthusiast and researcher, and I want to thank him for the many discussions and joyful trips together in Sumba, Jakarta and in Yogya. In Sumba, so many people helped me to create this book by telling their stories about local politics, inviting me to their homes and offices, discussing the issues for hours and preparing food and drinks for me and my compan- ions, and I would like to thank all who are not mentioned by name here. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ibu Dorkas M. Riwa, Wiyati ws. and Gany Wulang, Jonas Siahainenia, I.G. Made Raspita and Sofia A. Djuli, Pak Ande, Manasse Malo, and last but certainly not least to Pak Siliwoloe Djoeroemana, his daughter Dhani and her husband Stepanus Makambombu. Acknowledgements xvi Beginning in 1984, my research in Indonesia was sponsored by the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland), Wageningen Agricultural University, the University of Amsterdam, the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Modern Indonesia Program of Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, and the Van Vollenhoven Institute of Leiden University. To all these institutions I am most indebted. I presented parts of the chapters of this book at various seminars, workshop and conferences, organized by the Department of Agricultural Law of Wageningen Agricultural University, the University of Leiden, the KNAW-SPIN 1 research program ‘Social security and social policy in Indonesia’ in Nijmegen and Amsterdam, the Indonesian Institute of Science (Lembaga Ilmu Penelitian Indonesia) in Jakarta, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden and Jakarta, the KNAW-SPIN research programme Indonesian-Netherlands studies of Decentralisation of the Indonesian ‘Rechtstaat’ (negara hukum, rule of law), and its impact on ‘Agraria’ (INDIRA) in Jakarta, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden. I want to thank the institutions and the convenors for inviting me, and thank all the participants at those events for their valu- able comments and suggestions. For many years the following people have been significant mentors, com- menters, colleagues and friends who helped me in the process of writing this book: Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Adriaan Bedner, Johan Bokdam, Siliwoloe Djoeroemana, Maribeth Erb, Ireen Hoogenboom, Webb Keane, Gerry van Klinken, Roald Maliangkay, and Henk Schulte Nordholt. Their comments improved my analysis and text considerably. Heartfelt thanks go to Janet Hoskins and Gerry van Klinken for their per- ceptive readings of the completed manuscript and suggestions for revision. I also owe thanks to reviewers and editors of parts of the book that were published as articles: Benedict Anderson, Joshua Barker, Franz von Benda- Beckmann, Deborah Homsher, Ireen Hoogenboom, Eva-Lotte Hedman, and Gerry van Klinken. Alice Wright, Jonathan Zilberg and Harry Poeze (the latter of KITLV Press) receive my thanks for polishing the language of the manuscript and making the last corrections, and Marjan Groen for taking care of the lay out. Finally, I offer thanks to my husband, Laurens van Veldhuizen, and my sons Roel, Micha and Sofian. From the very beginning and even before 1984, 1 Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences) Scientific Programme Netherlands-Indonesia. Acknowledgements xvii Laurens was my best friend in discussing anything about Sumba. Whenever I could not remember why I was working on and writing this book, he remind- ed me and encouraged me to do so, and created the domestic sphere in which writing this book was a joy. When we all went together to Sumba in 2002, our sons stimulated us by asking many open and often critical questions which made us rethink many issues concerning Sumba and to explain them to a next generation audience. Their comments make my work stronger. Some parts of this book were part of articles that have been published previ- ously. I thank the editors and publishers of the articles listed below for per - mission to include a revised version in this book: 1992 ‘Umbu Hapi versus Umbu Vincent; Legal pluralism as an arsenal in village combats’, in: F. von Benda Beckmann and M. van der Velde (eds), Law as a resource in agrarian struggles, pp. 23-44. Wageningen: Agricultural University. [Wageningen Studies in Sociology 33]. 2001 ‘Tribal battle in a remote island; Crisis and violence in Sumba (Eastern Indonesia)’, Indonesia 72:141-58. 2005 ‘ Pilkada in East Sumba; An old rivalry in a new democratic setting’, Indonesia 80:81-107. 2007 ‘Creating a new district in West Sumba’ in: Henk Schulte Nordholt and Gerry van Klinken (eds), Renegotiating boundaries; Local politics in post Soeharto Indonesia , pp. 91-120. Leiden: KITLV Press. [Verhandelingen 238.] chapter i Introduction Sumbanese election campaign It was a month before the official beginning of the campaigns for the April 2004 parliamentary elections in Indonesia. I had just attended a session of election-lessons ( sosialisasi pemilu ) presented by the KPUD (Komisi Pemilihan Umum Daerah, Regional General Election Committee) in one of the rural dis- tricts of East Sumba. The KPUD chairman discussed the various rules of the election, such as, no campaigning outside the permitted period, no rallies in churches or government buildings (to demonstrate the lack of involvement of the clergy or local government), and no buying votes by political parties. He also explained why these were necessary for a truly democratic process. On the same day, Lukas Kaborang who was a former Golkar district head and the current chairman and primary candidate of the PPDK (Partai Persatuan Demokrasi Kebangsaan, Party for Democracy and Welfare) organ- ized a large meeting on the field next to Waingapu’s largest Protestant Church. The banner over the podium called the meeting ‘ sosialisasi’, suggest- ing that this meeting was similar to the one I attended, which was organized by the General Election Committee to explain the electoral procedures. A band playing popular music opened the programme. Then Lukas Kaborang gave a brilliant speech to explain his party’s positions and why PDK was the best choice. He emphasized that PDK stood for ’Partai Dengan Kristus’ (’The Party with Christ’) and, as if he were a professional Protestant minister, he preached about the farmer who sowed seeds (Luke 8:1-15) and used other Biblical parables. 1 The conclusion of each parable was that voting for PDK was the right thing to do for every good Christian, and therefore for every modern Sumbanese. After Kaborang’s speech the whole audience was invited to share a meal of rice and meat in order to stress the idea that ‘we are one big PDK family’. This event combined elements of traditional rituals, Christian rhetoric 1 See the Bible: Mathew 13:1-9.