Participation and Pembangunan

            Yahya Muaz is the Secretary General of Partai Aceh.  His eyes are red and bleary; I estimate he sleeps only 4 hours a night.  Yahya’s task is to negotiate with Partai Aceh’s diverse constituencies, from headstrong academics to battalion-leaders-turned-local politicos. Nine languages with an even greater number of ethnicities are present in Aceh, each region has a different political economy full of actors in conflict with each other.  Yahya’s job is to take the pulse the party and advise the governor where he can, but also to attempt to establish some sort of consensus among party members as to what should be done.

At midnight on a summer night, I was with Yahya as he met with local leaders in the city of Siglie at a coffee warung. “Warung politics” is where a great deal of discussion on Aceh’s issues happen, often with high-level decision-makers meeting with villagers, local journalists, engineers, contractors whoever can wrestle a moment at his table over a cup of famously strong Acehnese coffee.  I watched as Yahya pulled out his laptop and discussed the governor’s 5-year development plan.  Animated little cars traveled along a new road that would cut through the mountains, carrying goods to Banda Aceh to be shipped to Westerners for consumption.

Partai Aceh took the governorship just as the multilateral donors funds were drying up. This puts a great deal of pressure on the newly elected PA government. When I asked why he felt another road was necessary, For villagers who haven’t yet experienced economic incursions, they imagine wealth pouring in.  Moreover, building the roads themselves are a 5-year boon of employment, and, according to election polls, economic concerns were by far the greatest anxiety of the Acehnese (IRI 2012).  How those anxieties were framed made all the difference. 

As we sat at the warung, Yahya asked me what I thought of the 5-year plan. Imagining the expansion of the primary sector into subsistence farmland, and the ecological problems that that would cause, I asked: “Why not focus on a strategy to strengthen local economies?” Yahya explained: “We need to make something big, to show the people that we are developing Aceh.” The Indonesian word for development is pembangunan. At another warung a GAM insider explained the terms cultural differences to me. “Pembangunan doesn’t mean development the way you mean it. Here, pembangunan means to build things.  Like with concrete.”  He pointed to the Serambi where a front-page article highlighted the aspirations of young Acehnese.  The most respected occupation was contracting. One of my colleagues at the University of Syiah Kuala recounted his experience with a participatory development exercise in which villagers were asked what their village needed. The response was “an overpass.” They’d heard of an overpass being built on the other side of Aceh.  No one in the village owned a car�"they simply wanted to be employed to build it.

Hickey and Mohan cleverly observe that “participation” has been deployed by a variety of actors throughout history, from colonial masters to liberation theologists, in order to produce a wide range of ends, from subjugation to liberation (2005).  Those who frame the term pembangunan in public discourse, who control the Acehnese conception of development, are those who shape the popular opinion of the development agenda.

There are different messengers, however, who have witnessed the suffering of those impacted by the externalities of development. 

[CUT?][When flooding and toxic spills destroyed the small-scale aquaculture operations surrounding Mobil Oil’s plant, Nurjuba organized a group to support the fishermen. Selling embroidered hijabs (Muslim head scarves) from her shop in Lhoksumawe, she conducted advocacy and education on behalf of the affected villagers.  Focused on helping women and children, her organization, JARI, now conducts community-based monitoring and research on the impacts of ExxonMobil’s waste.  Without this knowledge, children would continue to swim in contaminated rivers, and not understand the reasons behind the periodic outbreaks of illness that sweeps the community whenever toxic dumping occurs.][Story about woman collecting mercury as miracle water]

In the height of Suharto’s reign of terror, a group of Acehnese in Aceh Utara, the district housing ExxonMobil’s operations, decided it would be safer to address environmental and human rights concerns as a group.  They founded SAHARA (Suara Hati Rakyat or People’s Conscience) and found that they suffered less threats from the military.  Dahlan, the Executive Director explains their frustration.  Since 1976 Aceh Utara has had LNG, but “even until today we suffer.  We have a lot of resources on our land but we are not prosperous.  Aceh Utara, we can say, is the poorest district in Aceh.”

As a result of the peace agreement, the percent of revenues the Acehnese government received from the exploitations of its natural resources went from 1.4% to 40%.  In 2008, that meant they received 770 million USD.  If that money is to be spent wisely, groups like SAHARA, strengthened by their experience with primary sector development and critical analysis, need expanded influence.

            After the tsunami, foundations and governments stopped funding advocacy work, and flooded Aceh with money focused on immediate nutritional outcomes.  Watchdog CSOs were left without the resources needed to conduct advocacy at the most critical time: the inception of a new democracy.

            This is part of a larger pattern.  In 2005, the UN’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) organized the Second High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to address 50 years of disturbing progress.  They did not question the economic underpinnings of development, but instead emphasized local ownership and alignment of aid programs in the “Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.” Similar sentiments were echoed in Indonesia’s 2009 “Jakarta Commitment.”  What this means is that Democracy Assistance programs now are increasingly aligned with the interests of the central government, and accountability certainly is not one of those interests.  Aspinall (2010) reports that in some cases the Indonesian government has used its expanded influence to veto continued financial support to CSOs that might be critical of the government.

At a CSO summit, more than 50 Acehnese organizations met to discuss their future: much talk revolved around funding.  Increasingly dependent on local government for funding, they are met with a problem.  If the bupati demands to keep 50% of a project funds for himself and the organization must use 20% for their overhead, that leaves only 30% to go to the actual programs. Worse, dependent on government funds, CSOs cannot perform their desperately needed watchdog function: criticizing government plans, educating citizens, and impacting the course of development in Aceh.

            Political participation isn’t just about voting or even consultation.  It’s about information networks and analysis. Acehnese understand this: surveys indicate that the vast majority with public concerns go to NGOs and the media first (Törnquist 2010).  The lynchpin for democracy, then, isn’t electoral procedures, decentralization, bureaucratic institutions or unqualified participation. The key to accountability and democracy is watchdog CSOs.