February 9, 2007
NOTHING MODERATES LIKE RESPONSIBILITY:
Rebel-led democracy for Indonesia's Aceh (Fabio Scarpello, 2/08/07, Asia Times)
When former rebel Irwandi Yusuf was sworn in on Thursday as the first directly elected governor of Indonesia's Aceh province, the ceremony capped one of Southeast Asia's most extraordinary democratic transitions.The landmark August 2005 peace deal between the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government, which brought a crushing 30-year civil war to an end, also ushered the way for Irwandi's election, which he won convincingly with 38% of the vote. The Acehnese have so far taken enthusiastically to democracy, where 80% of the province's 2.2 million eligible voters cast their ballots.
Those elections were held in an almost festive atmosphere, and were deemed free and fair by both local and international monitors.
It'd be nice if it didn't take a tsunami for folks to follow the template. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2007 11:44 AM
Aren't all rebel leaders, commies?
Posted by: erp at February 9, 2007 2:25 PMWell, in this case, the tsunami is regarded as a God-send. Leaders of the Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM, signed a landmark peace accord in Finland. And the mobilization of international support for Aceh after the tsunami was a catalyst in the peace talks, as donors quickly realized that the conflict was harming recovery efforts. The scale of the devastation also sapped the fighting spirit of the two sides, at the same time of a mutual realization that political stability was crucial to Aceh's economic future.
So the tsunami effectively opened the doors of Aceh to the world, hitherto closed for decades. A GAM spokesperson indicted that in retrospect, the Achinese regard the tsunami as a miraculous "act of God ... It is an added mercy that the reconstruction effort will last for years, for one can expect (and hope) that representatives of the international NGO's will remain yet a long time in Aceh, and that as witnesses they will deter the Indonesian government from incurring further suffering on the people of Aceh".