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Academic says Joko likely to be better match for West Papua
Radio New Zealand International - July 9, 2014
Indonesia is holding its elections today amid calls from West Papuan leaders for Papuans to boycott the elections in protest.
Jim Elmslie, of the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, says Joko Widodo, known as 'Jokowi', appears to have a more conciliatory approach to West Papua when compared to Prabowo Subianto's militaristic style.
But Dr Elmslie also told Amelia Langford neither candidate is interested in giving West Papua independence.
Jim Elmslie: Prabowo is seen as taking Indonesia back to a more authoritarian mode of government and that would probably be reflected on the ground by a more hardline approach by the military and police even though they are taking a fairly hardline approach now. Jokowi is seen as more of a people's person and indeed he doesn't have a military background. In his visits to Papua he tried to talk to grassroots people at the market etcetera and I am sure he would be more open to taking a discursive approach rather than a militaristic approach to demonstrators and trying to sort of heal the rift, if you can say it like that, he sees the problem in Papua as a rift between the Papuan people and the Indonesian people and has talked about trying to embrace the Papuan people and to dissolve the problems in that manner.
Amelia Langford: Now you have mentioned he [Jokowi] has said something about healing the rift or wanting to heal the rift. Has he made any indication that he would look to the future of providing independence to West Papua?
JE: Oh, there is no question that for both candidates independence is completely off the table and for the vast majority of Indonesians it is not an option at all. So what they would be looking at trying to do is to resolve the problems there within the framework of maintaining West Papua as part of Indonesia. There are no politicians there who are talking about independence as an option. From their point of view, it is more how do you deal with this problem? How do you deal with this rift? Whether you deal with it with a hardline approach and you crack down on people who are demonstrating or whether you try and make concessions and you have some sort of dialogue or you make gestures to try and reconcile the conflict. And that's really how it has played out over the last 20, 30 years. It's most of the time hardline repression and then periods of openness particularly under Gus Dur [Abdurrahman Wahid] after 2000, which many Indonesian politicians remember with horror because they thought that Gus Dur – that by being conciliatory towards the Papuans he opened up a [can] of worms and the big congress of 2000 where the Papuans were outspoken in their demands for independence – that that really was a counter-development for Indonesia. So I think you will find, whoever comes in, they are not interested in talking about independence – that they both acknowledge that there are serious problems in West Papua and it is a matter of how to deal with them and for both the candidates are interested in economic development down there. They see Papua as the least developed part of Indonesia and that the problems might be resolved through economic development and increased services. Mind you, which was also an argument that was used in East Timor for many years, that East Timor's problems would diminish with economic development and that didn't really prove the case there.
AL: So for West Papuans, we've got two candidates here, and one might be slightly more attractive than the other, but both options are pretty unsatisfactory?
JE: Well, for the Papuans they are in effect trapped within Indonesia and they don't want to be but the nature of the circumstance is they have found themselves against their wishes within the Indonesian nation. And certainly most, if not every Papuan I have talked to, would if given the chance not be in that situation but they are and it is a quandary for them. So I guess this boycott [of elections] to a large extent is symbolic and it is a message to people like yourself, and myself, saying, well reiterating this deep dissatisfaction of the status quo but also except for the options like economic development, possibly demilitarisation, what the Papuan people often express their desire for independence really is not an option for the Indonesian Government.
AL: How critical is this particular election for West Papua?
JE: Well I think it will be critical in the senses that I have mentioned – the general outlooks from the candidates. If you are a person living in that situation, where you are not free, what you say and do can have very severe consequences to your personal freedom and health. If you are in an environment as you are now where there is almost complete impunity – where the police and the military will pick people up and beat them and in the worst extremes people have been killed and there are no sanctions on the police officers or the soldiers who did that. They don't justify their actions then you live in a climate of fear and that comes to an extent from Jakarta, from the president, and I think if I was a West Papuan – if Jokowi was the president I would feel slightly more at ease than if Prabowo was. Simply because Jokowi doesn't have a military background so he doesn't see government and authority through the lens of a military mind – that he is a civilian who believes to an extent that the military should be accountable rather than a law unto itself.
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