Aceh reflects new thinking in Asia

Aceh reflects new thinking in Asia

Anthony Reid, The Straits Times, Asia News Network/Singapore

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Indonesian
government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), signed in Helsinki
on Aug 15, marks a refreshing innovation for Indonesia and for
nationalist thinking in Asia.

If the terms are successfully implemented, it will represent a
victory for pragmatic common sense, and for democratic
inclusiveness, over the "unitary state" mentality which has
dominated Indonesian politics since 1945.

Since its foundation in 1945, the Indonesian state has been
premised on a single sovereignty and source of legitimacy -- "one
state, one nation (bangsa), one language". Because the Dutch
strategy to oppose the revolutionary Republic of Indonesia was a
complex federal one, any attempts to qualify a single Indonesian
sovereignty had a ring of treachery for the revolutionaries. The
Indonesians who supported anything like federalism were silenced
through the period of revolutionary populism under Sukarno and of
the military-dominated bureaucracy under Soeharto.

In the exhilarating democratic climate since Soeharto's fall
in 1998, new flexibility seemed possible.

The referendum permitted to East Timor was a dramatic product
of that democratic flexibility, but its outcome unfortunately
appeared to confirm the logic of a single sovereignty.

East Timor was either 100 percent in the unitary state and
subject to the domination of a centralized military, or it was
100 percent out and obliged to construct all of its own expensive
autonomies in language, education, finance and so forth. This
confirmed for many Indonesians that sovereignty was indivisible.
The former Indonesian province of East Timor is now the Republic
of Timor Leste.

Aceh had to remain 100 percent in because the only alternative
was 100 percent out, threatening the eventual break-up of
Indonesia.

Elsewhere in the world, where sovereignties have evolved
through pragmatic compromise rather than rationalistic
revolution, some variations on single sovereignty have been
possible.

Significantly, it is Britain, with the longest experience of
the democratic nation-state, which has preserved the fullest
example of an asymmetrical state. Its four nations, England,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each have a different and
unique relationship with British sovereignty. Scotland has its
own currency, Parliament, established church and international
football team, and Scots have no difficulty considering their
nationality Scottish while carrying a British passport.

Canada has also proceeded far along the route of accepting one
unique place for the Quebec nation and another for indigenous
nations within the Canadian state.

As the Cold War post-colonial dogmas of indivisible absolute
sovereignty looked less secure in a globalising unipolar world,
there has been much new analysis of what Michael Keating
(Plurinational Democracy: Stateless Nations In A Post-Sovereignty
World, 2001) calls "asymmetrical government" for "plurinational"
states.

The Catalans and Basques in Spain, the Flemings in Belgium and
the Kurds in Iraq are among the "nations" whose situation has
prompted lively new thinking, drawing on older literatures about
the nature of sovereignty. Keating argues persuasively that "we
need to separate the concepts of nation, state and sovereignty,
so often conflated in political analysis"; that "people can well
have multiple national identities"; and that "if national
communities are asymmetrical, then asymmetrical Constitutions can
be defended on liberal and democratic grounds".

Surprisingly, little of this advanced thinking about
sovereignty has been brought into the debates in Asia, although
one would have thought the relations between Beijing, Hong Kong
and Taipei would call for it.

In reality, Asia has an even richer diversity than Europe of
pre-modern multinational states and sovereignties, as well as
contemporary examples in Malaysia and India of both plurinational
and asymmetrical Constitutions. Sarawak has different
constitutional rights than Negri Sembilan, the sovereignty of the
sultans coexists with that of the state, and most Malaysians
believe their nation (bangsa) is Malay, Chinese, Iban etc, in
addition to Malaysian.

As in the British case, these seemingly anomalous arrangements
have evolved through pragmatic compromise between the needs of
different nations. Although they have been relatively little
analyzed by the theorists, they have proved more compatible with
democratic freedoms than the "rational" single sovereignties of
the post-revolutionary Asian states.

So, what chance the Aceh agreement?

The eight-page MOU is encouragingly pragmatic rather than
declamatory, even if many of its terms cry out for clearer
definition. It consistently refers to "Aceh" without clarifying
whether it is a province, a nation or a state. "Aceh has the
right to use regional symbols including a flag, crest and a
hymn", "Aceh has the right to raise funds with external loans",
to raise taxes, to have unhindered access to foreign countries,
etc.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono seemed ready to be flexible
on the symbolic issues of intense emotional importance to both
sides, while bargaining hard about practical security issues.

Most intriguingly, there is provision for a kind of head of
state, a Wali Nanggroe (the title GAM leader Hasan Tiro has
sometimes adopted), "with all its ceremonial attributes and
entitlements".

In return for committing themselves to "a fair and democratic
process within the unitary state and Constitution of the Republic
of Indonesia", GAM has potentially acquired most attributes of
"nation" that they sought.

Immense difficulties of distrust and vested interest on the
ground may well still make this agreement impossible. The
Indonesian military will remain in place under the agreement,
with a reduced force of 14,700 men (and 9,100 "organic" police),
and will be the only armed force under the terms of the
agreement. If the soldiers on the ground wish to wreck the
agreement, they have the capacity to do so.

For its part, GAM was probably persuaded to commit to the
peace in the belief its allies could win the promised elections
for officials in April 2006 and for the legislature in 2009. The
real test will be how fair and transparent these elections can
be, and how far a defeated side will accept them even if that
could be achieved.

The international community, and particularly the ASEAN
countries participating in the Aceh Monitoring Mission, should be
in no doubt of the importance of this enterprise.

If the agreement proceeds well, it will be a model for
defusing other trouble spots around the region, and for
broadening the understanding of democracy and sovereignty in the
region. If it goes badly, it will set these issues back for
everybody, and confirm the intransigence on all sides.

The writer is director of the Asia Research Institute at the
National University of Singapore and author of An Indonesian
Frontier: Acehnese And Other Histories Of Sumatra (Singapore
University Press, 2004).