Uma politics: an ethnography of democratization in West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006

297 Pages·2008·10.518 MB·English

by  Vel, Jacqueline A. C

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Uma Politics
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An ethnography of democratization in
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West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006
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Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is an often s

unpredictable process. This book concentrates on that political transformation in
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one of Indonesia’s most ‘traditional’ islands, Sumba. Why does democratization n

create such great opportunities for local politicians with their private agenda’s? Why e
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does regional autonomy, as part of the national democratization program, promote n
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socio-economic inequality in West Sumba? g
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This book is written out of an intimate knowledge of Sumba’s social groupings, from h
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farmers through Chinese shopkeepers and government officials. Jacqueline Vel lived o
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in Sumba as a development worker for six years in the 1980s and has made frequent
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return visits for further research since then. She studied every stage of ‘transition to e
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democracy’ in the local context, thus creating this ethnography of democratization. o
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The book analyses themes apparent in a series of chronological events that occurred tiz
over a period of twenty years (1986-2006): village level politics under the New Order, a
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political violence as the New Order’s authority crashed in 1998, and the leadership io
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styles that developed amidst the new electoral democracy that followed. Jacqueline in
Vel illustrates her analysis with biographies of main political actors and ethnographic W
vignettes depicting their styles and strategies. Sumbanese politics are analysed as a e
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process of negotiating private interests and reciprocal obligations of the leaders and t
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their personal cliques, rather than viewing them only through the lens of political u
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parties or programmes they propagate. Uma Politics is the sequel of Vel’s dissertation b
The Uma Economy, and the title refers to the uniquely Sumbanese type of network a
,

politics. The author brings together tradition with the modern economy, government In Uma Politics
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and politics into an evolving, dynamic concept of political culture. o
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Jacqueline Vel is researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute of law, governance and ia
development at Leiden University. Part of the research for this book was for the Modern
Indonesia Project of KITLV in Leiden and sponsored by a research fellowship of the J An ethnography of
IIAS. She is currently involved in research on land law, access to justice, and socio-legal .
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aspects of biofuel production in Indonesia. . democratization in
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West Sumba, Indonesia,
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ISBN 978-90-6718-324-6
l
1986-2006
Jacqueline A.C. Vel
9 789067 183246
UMA POLITICS

V E R H A N D E L I N G E N
VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT
VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE
260
jacqueline a.c. vel
UMA POLITICS
An ethnography of democratization in
West Sumba, Indonesia, 1986-2006
KITLV Press
Leiden
2008
Published by:
KITLV Press
Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
(Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies)
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
website: www.kitlv.nl
e-mail: [email protected]
KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
(KNAW)
Cover: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp
ISBN 978 90 6718 324 6
© 2008 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner.
Printed in the Netherlands
Contents
Preface ix

Acknowledgements xv
I Introduction 1
Sumbanese election campaign 1
Making democracy work 3
Outline and arguments 6
Sumba in Indonesian context 7
Neo-patrimonialism in a democratic state 7
Widening world of the local elite 10
State, power and the forms of capital 10
Tradition and authority 12
Space and time 13
Individuals and networks 14
Political class 16
Uma economy and Uma politics 18
II Sumba and the state 21
Sumba: geography and subsistence 23
Population 28
History of state formation on Sumba 30
State and Sumbanese Christianity 35
State as career: Umbu Djima and the forms of capital 41
The state as bureaucratic procedures 47
The state as economic sector 49
Social cleavage 51
III Tradition, leadership and power 55
Traditional cultural capital 56
Ethnicity and traditional political organization 60
Traditional leadership 62
Legitimacy and adat 64
Traditional concepts of power 67
Power resources 70
Conclusions 72
Village 74
vi Contents
IV Legal pluralism and village politics 81
Village politics 83
Legal pluralism 85
Forms of capital 87
Adat in Lawonda 91
The state in the village 93
The Christian church in Lawonda 95
The development organisation 97
Umbu Hapi versus Pak Vincent 100
Clash of paradigms or legal pluralism 106
Village justice in West Sumba in 2004 108
V Regime change and democratization 113
Democracy and constitutional liberalism 114
Demands of Reformasi 116
Changing local regime 117
Uncertainty after May 1998 118
Capital town 121
VI Violence in Waikabubak 125
Explaining communal violence 127
Preparation: master narratives, previous antagonisms and
crisis discourse 129
Narrative one: clan rivalries 129
Narrative two: violence, warfare and violent rituals
in West Sumba 130
Narrative three: local political rivalry 132
Narrative four: national crisis discourse 133
Trigger incident 135
Transformation into communal conflict 136
Elevation into a wider discourse 137
The aftermath 138
Explanation and interpretation 140
Explanation one: criminal incident 140
Explanation two: part of local elite’s political struggle 141
Explanation three: part of long series of endemic riots 142
Waikabubak as case of ‘post-Suharto violence in Indonesia’ 143
Consequences for the 1999 bupati elections 146
VII Growing political public 149
International development aid for political reform 150
Civil society on Sumba 152
Adat revival 156
In touch with the rest of the world 158
Radio and newspapers 161
Voices of the political public 163
Contents vii
Small town 166
VIII Creating a new district 171
Decentralisation and pemekaran 171
Economic stakes 174
Historical arguments for pemekeran 175
Cultural and religious arguments 180
Rhetoric and theatre 181
Social forces behind pemekaran 185
Overseas Sumbanese 185
Local campaign leaders 189
Well-educated but unemployed youths 190
Women 191
Campaigning for Central Sumba 191
Conclusions 200
IX Elections 201
Local election experience 201
Democratic elections in 1999 203
Parliament elections in 2004 204
Presidential elections 211
Pilkada 212
West Sumba’s pilkada candidates 214
Umbu Bintang: the performing prince 219
Election rally in Kabunduk, Central Sumba 221
Symbols, rhetoric and ‘the angry man’ 225
Pote Leba: the intellectual bureaucrat 227
Golkar, bureaucrats and businessmen 229
The result 232
Conclusion 234
X Conclusions 237
The local context 238
Capital and leadership 240
Political identity 242
Political class, political public and the tani class 243
Democratization and Uma politics 246
Glossary 249
Abbreviations and acronyms 253
Annexes 255
Bibliography 257
Index 271

Introduction
Preface
Democracy cannot be implemented overnight. Democratization is more than
‘just’ the introduction of a series of policy measures or new laws in countries
previously ruled by authoritarian regimes. Instead, it is a lengthy, contextual-
ized and often unpredictable process in which elements of democratic regime
according to plan or theory articulate with long-established patterns of gov-
ernance and politics in a specific society. This book describes that process in
West Sumba, in Eastern Indonesia and asks the central question of how local
leaders exploit the opportunities created by changes in the national political
context and how these changes are reflected in the specific stylistic nature of
Sumbanese politics.
In Indonesia, on 21 May 1998 President Suharto stepped down from office,
marking the start of a new period in Indonesian history in which the country
would be transformed quickly into a democracy. Studies that describe the
political history of this period show a sequence of the most salient features of
what was first called ‘a transition to democracy’. The first studies centred on the
financial crisis in 1998 and Reformasi (Budiman, Hatley and Kingsbury 1999)
and concentrated on the end of the New Order and hopes for the future.
The reorganization of the regime caused uncertainty regarding not only who
would be in charge nationally, but also in each region or district. Governors and
district heads, unsure of support from the centre and local forces, used their
new freedoms of speech and organization to voice their interests and griev-
ances. Moreover, the economic crisis had impoverished many families and had
forced the state to restrict the number of civil servants, resulting in intensified
job competition and changes in the rules governing that competition.
The first three years after the demise of the New Order sadly became a
period of widespread violence in Indonesia. Many instances of ‘small town
wars’ (Van Klinken 2007) were described by researchers who had engaged in
long-term studies of particular areas and now witnessed peaceful coexistence
transform into inter-group violence. One general conclusion of these col-
lected studies is that local elite had a large role in producing the violence and
mobilized mass support by emphasizing religion and ethnicity. This type
of political violence occurred in West Sumba’s capital town Waikabubak in