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Jokowi gets red mark in agrarian dispute resolution
President Jokowi has not achieved agrarian reform as he had campaigned in 2014 on his Nawacita nine-point development agenda; instead, a civil group focusing on the issue has found that the number of land disputes and incidents of state violence have increased during his tenure.
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President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo (center, front row) poses for a group photo on Dec. 27, 2023, along with Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Hadi Tjahjanto (fifth left, front row, in white shirt) and East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa (fifth right, in yellow hijab), at a land certificate distribution event in Sidoarjo, East Java. The agrarian planning ministry aims to distribute 120 million land certificates under the comprehensive systematic land registration (PTSL) program by the end of 2024. (Antara/Umarul Faruq)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is set to end his final term in October with a bad record in agrarian reform, after more conflicts occurred during his administration compared to his immediate predecessor and civil groups urging his successor to do better at settling rampant disputes in the sector.
The Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) recorded 2,939 cases of agrarian conflicts involving a total of 6.3 million hectares of land up to the ninth year of the President’s two terms in office.
According to the civil group, more than 1.7 million households were impacted by land disputes from the first full year of Jokowi’s presidency in 2015 until last year.
The KPA recorded at least 241 conflicts in 2023 alone, an increase from 212 such incidents in 2022. Last year’s disputes involved 638,000 ha of land and affected 135,608 households.
The total figure of land disputes under the Jokowi presidency showed an increase almost twice that of the 1,520 incidents recorded during the two terms of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from 2005 to 2014, said KPA secretary-general Dewi Kartika.
“Over the past 10 years, the plantation and agribusiness sectors have been responsible for the majority of agrarian conflict cases,” Dewi said during the launch of the KPA report on Jan. 15.
The report also noted that 3,503 people were subjected to state violence and criminalization during land disputes under the Jokowi administration, an increase of 68 percent from the 2,087 victims of state violence recorded during Yudhoyono’s tenure.
