Kalla upbeat House will support Aceh peace deal

Kalla upbeat House will support Aceh peace deal

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Vice President Jusuf Kalla has expressed his optimism that
legislators will support the recently signed Aceh peace deal,
despite their initial reluctance to do so.

"I have a feeling that the DPR will support the deal," he told
the Jakarta Editors Club in his official residence on Jl.
Diponegoro in Central Jakarta on Sunday night referring to the
House of Representatives. "For sure, Golkar is behind the truce."

Golkar, which Kalla chairs, constitutes more than one-fifth of
the 550-strong House. With support from other party factions of
the House, he said, he was confident that they would support the
peace agreement.

Kalla was accompanied by Minister of Justice and Human Rights
Hamid Awaluddin at the event. Coordinating Minister for
Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo Adi Sucipto, who was
present at Kalla's residence, left early for another engagement.

The House will grill the government on Wednesday about the
details of the deal that has harvested some harsh criticism after
the agreement was made public only after the signing of the
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Helsinki on Aug. 15.

House support, however, is not binding, since the Constitution
only says that the government should "take into account" the
opinion of the House.

Kalla lashed out at critics who say that Aceh rebels will soon
take over power now that the peace deal has been signed.

When asked why the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was not dissolved,
Kalla said: "If GAM is declared non-existent, whom are we going
to deal with (in implementing the peace agreement)?" he asked.

Dropping their demand for independence and laying down their
weapons, he said, constituted all that the government had been
after.

The legislators, who only learned about the details of the MOU
after the signing, have said that the government should have
consulted them prior to the Helsinki talks.

"The government did not want to bring the MOU to the DPR
beforehand because it did not want to transform GAM's position
into a state overnight," he said, referring to the House when
asked about it.

Kalla acknowledged that the deal bears only the key points of
the agreement.

"It is impossible to go into technical details in a peace
agreement," he said, while defending that the results had been in
line with what the government had wanted.

He also acknowledged that there was bound to be some
confusion, especially during the transition period from Aug. 15
to Aug. 31.

Kalla requested that people be understanding in the event of
any glitches in the days to come.

Asked whether the deal had been in line with the government's
stance, Kalla replied: "Ninety-nine percent."

The final agreement was almost the same as the government's
original draft, he said.

Kalla has been credited for his key behind-the-scenes role in
the Helsinki talks. As a minister under president Megawati
Soekarnoputri, Kalla initiated the peace talks in 2003, soon
after the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement that was brokered by
the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Centre broke down.

His deep attachment to the issue was evident when he went
through each of the 70-odd clauses of the deal with total ease
and confidence, joking at times "it's as if I was playing a
lawyer".

"Peace talks differ from a seminar or a symposium," Kalla
said, and it was wrong to treat the peace deal as the result of a
seminar or symposium.

Unlike a seminar, he said, there were two parties in peace
talks, each with their own extreme ideas.

"At one extreme, we wanted GAM to surrender, kiss the red-and-
white flag, lay down their arms and weapons; and on the other
extreme, they wanted nothing but independence."

The peace deal, he said, was a compromise that emerged from
these "extreme" positions.

"All agreements are a kind of compromise," Kalla said.

He said he was grateful that the peace deal did not violate
the Constitution or the law, or see any party lose face.

"Disagreement with the law, if any, is only because Aceh is a
special autonomy region," he said.

Aceh and Papua are the only two special autonomy regions in
the country.