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Aceh parties maintain local support despite internal rifts, violence
Despite internal rifts and a string of violent attacks directed at their politicians, three local parties in Aceh â the Aceh Peace Party (PDA), the Aceh National Party (PNA) and the Aceh Party (PA) âclaim that they still have the full support of the majority of the provinceâs 3
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Despite internal rifts and a string of violent attacks directed at their politicians, three local parties in Aceh ' the Aceh Peace Party (PDA), the Aceh National Party (PNA) and the Aceh Party (PA) 'claim that they still have the full support of the majority of the province's 3.3 million voters and will prevail in the April 9 legislative election.
Unlike the country's other 33 provinces, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, or just Aceh, has implemented a unique political party system following the signing of a 2005 memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the now dissolved separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government in
Helsinki, Finland.
The system, implemented for the first time in the 2009 legislative election, allows local political parties to compete against national parties to win legislative seats offered at the provincial, regency and municipal levels.
The local parties, however, cannot nominate members for lawmaker posts in the House of Representatives.
The PA, founded by former GAM elites and supporters who waged a decades-long insurgency against the Indonesian government, won the 2009 election in Aceh after it clinched 46.9 percent of the vote.
Although Aceh's six local parties managed to garner 53.5 percent of the vote in the 2009 election, it
was only the PA and the Aceh Sovereignty Party ' the former name of PDA ' that were able to translate their votes into legislative seats at the Aceh Legislative Council (DPRA), with the former securing 33 and the latter one, out of 69 seats.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and the Golkar Party, the country's two biggest political parties, finished second and third in Aceh, securing 10 and eight DPRA seats respectively.
The PA also showed its dominance at the regional level, as it successfully became the largest party in 14 out of the province's 23 regions.
An internal dispute, however, soon emerged within the PA after it refused to support the reelection bid of former Aceh governor and party member Irwandi Yusuf in the 2012 gubernatorial election, and instead nominated senior GAM figure Zaini Abdullah as its official candidate.
The dispute between the PA and Irwandi, who contested the election as an independent candidate, led to a string of shootings allegedly involving former GAM combatants divided between supporting Zaini or Irwandi, who once served as GAM's spokesperson.
Zaini and his running mate, Muzakir Manaf, won a landslide victory, encouraging Irwandi to establish the PNA in April 2012 to challenge PA's domination and accommodate former GAM members who were dissatisfied with the party.
Competing against 12 national political parties, the PA, the PNA, and the PDA said they were ready to reprise the domination of local parties in the upcoming legislative election.
PA spokesman Fachrul Razi said his party was targeting to secure 70 percent of DPRA seats in the 2014 election, while PNA secretary-general Thamren Ananda said he was positive that his party could garner at least 30 percent.
'If the police can maintain security in Aceh ahead of the election, I believe the PNA will outperform such a target,' Thamren said.
PDA spokesman Hamdan Budiman, meanwhile, said his party was expecting to secure at least five DPRA seats so that it could form its own faction in the DPRA.
'We have learned a lot from our poor performance in 2009. We, for example, have been intensifying campaigns through social media to attract more young voters,' he said.
The PDA, which promotes the implementation of sharia in Aceh, has heavily relied on the support of local Muslim clerics, students and graduates of Islamic boarding schools.
Data from the General Elections Commission (KPU) shows that Aceh has 3.3 million registered voters, with the North Aceh regency accounting for the most with 389,143 voters and Sabang municipality the least with 22,990.
Unhealthy competition between local and national parties in Aceh has triggered a spate of violent incidents in the past several months, the police have claimed.
Among the violent election-related incidents was the deadly shooting of Faisal, a PNA legislative candidate; a shooting spree at the PNA southwestern branch office; the burning of a PA command post in Langsa; and the kidnapping of a Nasdem Party legislative candidate, also in Langsa.
As the ruling party popular among former GAM fighters, the PA has been repeatedly accused by its political opponents of masterminding such attacks.
Fachrul, however, has denied such accusations, saying that several PA members had also fallen victim in some of the incidents.
'We have to trust the police to take care of this [security] issue,' he said.
