Introduction
The following discussion was written based on
interviews conducted by Jurnal Bersatu (Journal of
Unity) editorial staff with a number of people’s
organisations. The spectrum and “political
groupings” along with the sectors and class of
organisation were several of the considerations in
the choice of the groups that were interviewed.
Nevertheless there were two organisations – the
People’s Movement Alliance for Agrarian Reform
(AGRA) and the United People’s Party (PPR) who on
the eve of the publication of this journal were
unable to be interviewed.
Peasant Organisations
2. Iwan, Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA)
The current situation in the agrarian sector is
contradictive. On the one hand, large plantations
and the agricultural industry such as seed providers
are experiencing extraordinary advances. On the
other hand, farmers continue to face problems
because they do not own land on an adequate economic
scale, so agricultural production is no longer
enough to support farmers’ livelihoods and they must
seek additional sources of incomes, such as becoming
motorcycle taxi drivers (ojek) and so forth. In
addition to this, since the consolidation of the
post-Suharto regime, the rate of land take overs [by
big companies] has also increased until it has
become similar to the Suharto era.
With regard to non-land related problems, the trend
is now worse than during the Suharto era, because
the price of fuel is tending to increase, so
agricultural production input costs have also tend
to rise, while increasing commodity prices has not
tended to have had a significant influence on
farmers because export tax increases by companies
and agricultural traders is being born by the
farmers. With regard to the widespread import of
agricultural products, the essence of the problem is
that business administration since the Suharto era
has hurt Indonesian agricultural products. So the
most important issue for farmers is genuine agrarian
reform.
The currents state of the peasant movement
There are three problems in the peasant movement at
present. First, the bonds of solidarity within the
peasant movement at the moment are still based on
agrarian conflicts. So farmers join a union or line
up with farmers from other sub-districts because
they are both involved in a particular agrarian
conflict with a company. Such bonds have
limitations, because the goal of the peasant
movement is not just to resolve agrarian conflicts.
These bonds of solidarity must be transformed
towards something that is more productive in
character based on joint land management in the form
of joint enterprises such as cooperatives. Second,
the peasant movement has yet to succeed in
attracting farmers that are facing non-land related
management problems, whereas there are also many
conflicts that arise not because of non land-related
conflicts, such as the availability of fertilizer
and so forth. Third, the peasant movement is still
unable to unit the rural (agricultural) and urban
(industrial) problems, where the conditions in rural
areas are closely related to urban conditions, even
with global conditions, for example the over-supply
of labour from the villages influences the
bargaining power of trade unions in the cities.
Peasant movement unity
In terms of issues, within the peasant movement
everyone is in agreement, that is the need for
genuine agrarian reform. Here, peasant unions at the
national level could be pushed to form a national
confederation so that the demands of the peasant
movement are better understood. What has become a
problem is that peasant unions also face concrete
situations on the ground such as land takeovers by
companies and so forth, and there is a gap between
these concrete conditions and the discourse on
agrarian reform and the unity of the peasant
movement. Likewise, there has been no cooperation to
resolve these concrete conditions or to work out a
roadmap to transform peasant unions that could come
out of joint education and practical work on the
ground.
Unity or cooperation of the peasant movement with
other social movements, such as the labour movement
and students, is also important in order to be able
to bring global problems into the conscious of the
peasant class. This need for multi-sector unity is
actually already understood by some organisations,
but the lengthy process in this direction has not
yet started in a sustainable manner. Meeting that
what has taken place to date is often just based on
momentum, such as during the World Trade
Organisation conference.
Aims of the struggle
The KPA’s concept of agrarian reform is uniting the
[problems in the] social system, starting with rural
(farmers) to urban (industrial) problems, to bring
this together to return to the social aims of the
Indonesian state. The KPA itself believes that the
three [main] rural issues are: 1) the lack of and
effective use of advanced technology; 2) excess
labour and: 3) the lack of productive access to the
land. These problems could be overcome through
village and farmer owned enterprises that manage a
division of labour (diversification) that is
mutually supportive. This system could improve
productivity because it would hold down input
[costs] and at the same time resolves the problem of
excess labour and reduce the flow of labour to the
cities. This would be a trial of practical
socialism, which would transform one structure into
the industrial world, bearing in mind that since the
Dutch colonial period Indonesian agriculture has
functioned simply to supply raw materials to the
advanced countries.
Political parties
There are already many peasant organisations that
are progressive and understand the need for
political struggle in the form of advancing the
agenda of agrarian reform into an agenda of taking
power, because it would indeed be impossible for the
peasant movement alone to influence those in power.
But the problem is the readiness of the peasant
unions themselves, because in confronting repression
there are those within the peasant movement who are
building coalitions with particular sections of the
political elite. Meaning these movements will have
to calculate that if they are pushed to build an
independent peasant movement and sever all relations
with the elite that have protected them up until
now, there are risks related to their land and the
repression they will face.
The 2OO9 elections
Iwan is not convinced that the 2009 elections will
be able to fix the people’s problems, because these
problems are related to the global economic
situation. In the case of people’s political parties
such as the United People’s Party (PPR), if they can
garner a significant vote in the 2009 elections,
perhaps there are hopes that things could proceed in
a better direction. But for activists that have
joined the traditional parties, there is not much
hope, because they can only take up their private
agenda and not the people’s agenda. If the aim of
addressing the elections is to organise, it would be
easier to organise by campaigning around the fuel
price increases, the increase in the price of basic
goods and so forth rather than campaigning in the
2009 elections.