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Village funds program: Listen closer
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Villagers ride motorcycle along the newly repaired road in Minahasa Baji Village, South Sulawesi on Nov. 29. The repair of the road is financed with village fund. (Antara/ Basri Marzuki)
D
uring spring last year, I met with Budiman Sudjatmiko, a politician from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), on his visit to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Then he proudly declared the government’s plan to provide village funds of Rp 1 billion (US$70,921), which he said marked a significant political shift from central to local government.
Early in January, I visited Madura Island off East Java, where I met rural people. Both experiences suggested to me that candidate pair number two, Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno, stands a great chance of winning the upcoming presidential election in Madura — though politics can change within seconds.
First, the irony lies in the concept of the Rp 1 billion village funds program, which is intended to distribute power and is supposed to establish trust in the government, in this case the incumbent, specifically among people at the grassroots.
The program is remarkable considering that centralized power has long obstructed development in Indonesia.
Additionally, the vice presidential candidate running with incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Ma’ruf Amin, is the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) leader. Madura is well known as an NU stronghold; it is sometimes even said that instead of Islam, NU is the true religion of the Madurese.
Assessing the level of hate on the island, it reminds me of what American political scientist Katherine Cramer notes in her book The Politics of Resentment to explain the rage of a rural community in Wisconsin, Madison. According to Cramer, in the politics of resentment individuals do not focus their blame on elite decision makers as they attempt to comprehend an economic recession.
Instead, they eye fellow residents whom they think are eating their share of the pie.
