1) Yudhoyono miffed over plan for his ‘arrest’

1) Yudhoyono miffed over plan for his ‘arrest’

2) Britain Promises to Protect Yudhoyono From 'Citizen's Arrest'

3) Indonesia Seeks to Increase Royalties From Mineral Mining to 10%

4) Polls: Between Jakarta and Papua

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http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/09/20/yudhoyono-miffed-over-plan-his-arrest.html

1) Yudhoyono miffed over plan for his ‘arrest’

Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Thu, September 20 2012, 9:47 AM

Susilo Bambang Yuhoyono: (JP/Ricky Yudhistira)

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has responded angrily over a move by pro-Papua independence activists who have offered a bounty for his arrest when he visits the United Kingdom next month.

Presidential spokesperson Julian Aldrin Pasha said that Yudhoyono was angry over what the group referred to as his planned “citizen’s arrest and said that the publicity stunt could harm relations between Indonesia and the United Kingdom.

Julian said that the President, would not file a complaint with the UK government and that it would not affect the trip to London.

“We have spoken with the British Embassy in Jakarta about the issue, because, frankly, the campaign has hurt the relationship between Indonesia and the UK,” Julian said on Wednesday.

Yudhoyono is scheduled visit Britain from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 to attend celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron delivered the invitation for the jubilee personally during a state visit to Jakarta in April.

Julian said Yudhoyono’s visit to London has been planned to enhance ties between the two nations.

“The Indonesia-UK relationship is too precious to be disrupted by such a cheap act. The British government, through its embassy in Jakarta, shared the opinion that we need not respond excessively. We do need clarification to ensure the public understands the situation,” he said.

Julian said that the arrest plan made little sense.

“It is not possible for the President, in his capacity as a head of a state, to be detained or arrested. The President’s security and safety during his visit to the UK has been fully guaranteed by the UK government. The London Metropolitan Police have guaranteed that the plan will not materialize,” Julian added.

The Free West Papua campaign, which is believed to be based in Great Britain, has offered a reward of £50,000 (US$81,325) to “the first person[s] to perform a citizen’s arrest” on Yudhoyono during his state visit to the UK.

The activists have said Yudhoyono must be held accountable for “ordering ongoing genocide in West Papua where over 500,000 innocent people have been killed including women and children.”

The campaign, posted on arrestpresidentsby.wordpress.com, also claims that Yudhoyono was wanted by the International Criminal Court for orchestrating the genocide. The information was posted on Sept. 1 and is the only item on the blog.

The arrest plan itself appears only to be conducted as a publicity stunt.

The website said that anybody could claim the reward if they could “calmly and in a gentle fashion lay a hand on Yudhoyono’s shoulder or elbow, in such a way that he cannot have any cause to complain of being hurt or trapped by you, and announce loudly, ‘Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, this is a citizen’s arrest for genocide and crimes against humanity in West Papua. I am inviting you to accompany me to a police station to answer the charge’.”

The website added, “It is likely that British police officers will be accompanying Yudhoyono, so you should explain the charge to them, and encourage them to support you by arresting him. You are advised not to put yourself at risk of charges of assault or false imprisonment.”

The attempt has also to be “reported in at least one mainstream media outlet”.

According to the website, the action would be “largely symbolic but will have great political resonance”.

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http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/britain-promises-to-protect-yudhoyono-from-citizens-arrest/545374

2) Britain Promises to Protect Yudhoyono From 'Citizen's Arrest'
September 19, 2012

The British government has promised to guarantee the safety of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on his planned visit to the United Kingdom in October, following the announcement of a reward offer for anyone able to arrest him during the visit.

“We’ve got an assurance from the police in Great Britain that they won’t let such a thing happen, and that [the president’s security] will be fully guaranteed by the British authorities,” presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said on Wednesday in Jakarta.

Julian was speaking in response to an announcement made by the UK-based West Papua pro-independence group Free West Papua Campaign, which offered a 50,000 British pound ($81,000) reward to anyone who places Yudhoyono under “citizen’s arrest” during his visit to Britain, scheduled for Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.

The group accuses Yudhoyono of human rights offenses in his handling of the restive Papua provinces.

Julian said the reward offer had caused “discomfort,” as Yudhoyono planned his visit at the invitation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

“The British government and especially the British queen have invited the president [to come] because he is known to be a figure who has played a significant role in advancing democracy in Indonesia,” Julian said.

“To be honest, this is uncomfortable for us. … The reward offer to arrest the president is considered an insult to a state symbol, especially because it is made by a group of people who probably have certain political interests,” he added.

Julian said, however, that the Indonesian government had yet to decide whether it would take any action against the group in response to the reward offer.

Antara/JG

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http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/business/indonesia-seeks-to-increase-royalties-from-mineral-mining-to-10/545485

3) Indonesia Seeks to Increase Royalties From Mineral Mining to 10%
September 20, 2012

Indonesia has asked metal mining companies including the local units of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and Vale SA to raise royalties to 10 percent.    

The government is seeking higher payments as part of negotiations to extend the companies’ mining contracts, Deputy Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Rudi Rubiandini said. Freeport Indonesia currently pays 1 percent as royalty for mining gold and 3.5 percent for copper.    

“Ten percent is the proper rate for royalties,” Rubiandini said in an interview yesterday. “We will sit with them again and discuss this. It’s part of the renegotiation.”    

Indonesia formed a team in January to review mining contracts and consider raising the state’s share. The group has until December 2013 to conclude the review, according to a decree signed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Jan. 10. Coal mining companies in Indonesia pay 13.5 percent as royalty and the government is seeking to bring mineral miners to a similar level, Rubiandini said.    

Fourteen mining companies have agreed to raise the royalties and are waiting for the government’s approval, he said.    

Freeport Indonesia operates the Grasberg mine in the Papua province, which contains the world’s largest recoverable copper reserves. The mine accounted for 19 percent of the parent’s revenue last year.

Bloomberg

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http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/09/20/polls-between-jakarta-and-papua.html

4) Polls: Between Jakarta and Papua

Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin, Sydney | Jakarta | Thu, September 20 2012, 7:47 AM

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Paper Edition | Page: 4

In the remote Papuan regency of Dogiyai, the direct election of a local chief recently led to fresh violence. Rejecting a Constitutional Court ruling on the final outcome of the regency’s direct elections, supporters of a losing regent candidate burned down the offices of the regent and local elections commission. This is not the first we’ve seen of this kind of violence in Papua. So far, the region has given us the worst scenes of violence related to direct local elections in Indonesia.

Previously, a series of violent incidents related to direct polls in the Papuan highland regency of Puncak claimed around 50 lives and wounded hundreds. In early 2012, in another remote highland regency of Tolikara, violence related to direct polls killed 11, injured hundreds and set hundreds of houses and local government buildings on fire. Last year, the Yahukimo’s regent office and the house of a West Papuan governor candidate were burned down after direct poll outcomes were announced. In 2008, angry mobs destroyed the office of Wamena’s local election commission and several other buildings because a regent candidate did not pass the verification process of the local elections commission.

Because of this record of direct poll-related violence, the practice of local democracy in Papua has been assessed as being immature (Kompas, Aug. 29, 2012).

What happened in Papua, however, is in contrast to the current direct polls for Jakarta’s governor. A runoff poll is scheduled on Sept. 20. Jakarta’s elections have been free from such violence. Its voters have been labeled as rational, independent and fluid — required characteristics for a well-functioning democracy. Furthermore, Jakarta’s people have been widely praised for their increasingly mature approach to local democracy.

Although the issues tribal affiliations, religion, race and societal groups (popularly termed using the acronym of SARA) have been deliberately used in Jakarta’s elections to polarize voters, this strategy seems to fail. Jakarta’s rational voters are unlikely to respond to such appeals. The SARA related campaign has also been closely scrutinized by the media, civil society organizations and the election oversight body.

In contrast, in Papua, most of the violence related to direct polls has been shaped by tribal issues. As in other cases of ethno-communal violence, ethnic cleavages have been effectively used as means for mobilization.

How would one explain the stark difference between Jakarta and Papua with regards to their contrasting records in exercising local democracy?

The difference could possibly be rooted in the contrasting level of socio-economic development of the two regions.

On the one hand, Jakarta is the most prosperous part of Indonesia, dominated by the highly educated middle class. It has the most vibrant civil society organizations and boasts the close attention of a high quality free press. On the other hand, the Papua region, which consists of two provinces, is the least developed part of the country, with the highest poverty levels. It also has the lowest human development index; a composite measure of health, education and purchasing power.

Indonesia is not only a large, diverse country inhabited by some 240 million people spread across three time zones; it also displays a degree of regional disparities in terms of the socio-economic development of its 500 regencies and municipalities. However, the method of direct polls in practicing local democracy is more a “one-size-fits-all” approach for all of the country’s sub-national entities.

Such an argument resonates with a variant of the modernization theory firstly proposed by Seymour Martin Lipset half a century ago. The hypothesis asserts that development breeds democracy, not the other way around. To quote Lipset, “from Aristotle down to the present, men have argued that only in a wealthy society in which relatively few citizens lived in real poverty could a situation exist in which the mass of the population could intelligently participate in politics and could develop the self-restraint necessary to avoid succumbing to the appeals of irresponsible demagogues”.

The above cases of Jakarta and Papua may seem like anecdotal evidence. However, my study of 282 regencies and municipalities that held direct polls from 2005 to 2007 provides further evidence of the above modernization hypothesis.

The research constructs an “electoral hostility index” based on a carefully compiled database of the 2005-2007 direct polls in 282 regencies and municipalities. The index measures severity levels of direct poll-related violence. Then, the index is used as a reasonable approach, albeit not perfect, to differentiate the maturity of local democracy across Indonesian localities.

It was found that higher electoral violence was significantly associated with higher poverty rates, lower per capita income and lower human development levels.

This is not encouraging as regards to democratic consolidation. But it provides an important lesson and warning since the severity of direct polls-related violence seems to be much higher in the second round of direct local elections, which began in 2010, compared with the first round during 2005-2008.

Although the chances of direct polls-related violence jeopardizing democratic consolidation at the national level seem very remote, they certainly affect the viability of local democracy. Direct local elections are only alternative procedures in practicing local democracy; not the essence of democracy.

Indonesia’s overall experiences with democracy appear to be consistent with modernization theory. The creation of (or transition to) democracy in 1998 was the country’s second attempt. The first, in the mid-1950s, was a total failure. The country joined the second wave of democratization after World War II, but it was short-lived, lasting from just after independence until “guided democracy” in 1959. Democracy was not restored for four decades. In 1998, a different Indonesia made a second attempt.

Thanks to the socio-economic achievements made during the three decades of the developmental-autocratic Soeharto regime, Indonesia in 1998 was a more modern society — more educated, industrialized and urbanized, and having much higher income — compared with the Indonesia of the 1950. The risks of democracy’s retreat are now much lower than they were four decades ago.

Nevertheless, democracy does not only need to be consolidated viewed from a country level analysis, its viability across the country’s highly diverse localities is also imperative. Otherwise, to borrow a phrase from the researcher Vedi Hadiz, Indonesia will only achieve a consolidated illiberal democracy.

The writer is a lecturer in development studies at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. The above study was published by the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (Routledge), in an article entitled “Electoral conflict and the maturity of local democracy: Testing the modernization hypothesis.”

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