Indonesian farmers threaten to boycott presidential election

Producer: Melanie Yip
First broadcast: 9 June 04, Radio Singapore International

Reports from Jakarta say that thousands of farmers and activists participated in a demonstration yesterday demanding ownership of the land on which they work.

Many of Indonesia's farmers do not own the land they have been working on for years.

The farmers have also threatened to boycott the upcoming Indonesia presidential elections if their demands are not met.

So why are Indonesian farmers denied ownership of the land?

Melanie Yip put the question to Sandra Moniaga (SM), a Public Interest lawyer at HUMA, a Jakarta based NGO that deals in community and ecological law reforms.

SM: Many of the farmers who joined the process yesterday are farmers from Java. Many of them have been descendents of those who have been displaced since the colonial times and recently. so a lot of them have to work on lands that have been claimed by the state. So the land is not owned by farmers, and belong to state claimed land. Second, there has been a lot of land transfer, land control by individuals in the villages. You can see, for some areas in West Java, the ratio is certain villages is 3 families own 93% of the land. Compare that to 90% of the farmers owning only 3% of the land. So the ratio is not positive at all.

Under what circumstances would ownership be given to the farmers? Can they buy the land, for example?

SM: There are different types of land titles. They can get the full ownership through the land reforms. But they can also be given the rights to manage the land for a long period of time, subject to expansion, like managing the land for 30 years, and subject the terms to expansion after. So there are various types of tenures that can be developed.

Are the farmers justified in asking for ownership of the land?

SM: Yes because for most of them, they have been working on the land for more than 20 years. Under Indonesian law, those who have been working on the land for more than 20 years are subjected to be prioritized to receive the full (land) title, which is ownership. And that is the rule.

The farmers have threatened to boycott the Indonesian Presidential election if their demand for ownership of the land is not met. Martin Hughes (MH), Country Manager of the Control Risks Group based in Jakarta told me about the scale of the protests and the possible impact of the voter boycott on the results of presidential election.

MH: The protest that happened yesterday was not as big as one particular media source would lead us to believe. Originally, the scheduled demonstration had anticipated 1,500 people where in fact, only a couple of hundreds of people turned up to protest. So if you compare the gap between the anticipated demonstration turnout and the actual number of people who demonstrated, the possibility of shaping the views of the farmers would be very low.

The farmers and protesters have also called for an end to "New Order Militarism." How is this connected to the farmers' demands to own land?

MH: It is an interesting question. I honestly do not see any connection. The only connection that I see is in any protest, people will take advantage of the situation and give out messages that bear little co-relation to the issue at hand.

Siswono Yudohusodo, who is head of the National Indonesia Farmers Organization, is contesting in the July 5 Indonesian Presidential Election as Dr. Amien Rias' running mate. Does that give the team an added advantage, in terms of attracting voters from the rural farming population in Indonesia?

MH: All in all, the pairing of Siswono and Amien Rais does not give Amien Rais a great deal of leverage. I think his ability to attract voters is somewhat limited, and if you're looking at the farmers across Indonesia, I don't think Siswono can bring in many votes.

Some observers have gone as far as saying that "if Amien Rais and Siswono Yudohusono win the presidential election, they can be expected to be able to improve the fate of majority of Indonesian farmers. How likely is this scenario?

MH: This is hard to gauge at this moment. To make such changes would be difficult to do because they need to have the support of a unified parliament to ensure those changes take place.