Entah bagaimana ceritanya, endemik absurditas yang dibentuk tatanan neoliberalisme global itu pada gilirannya sampai dipedalaman Sulawesi Tenggara, tepatnya di pulau Kabaena. Di pulau eksotis yang berukuran hanya kurang-lebih 867 km2 itu, kita dapat menyaksikan sintesa beberapa kontradiksi dahsyat yang mencengkram keindahan pulau itu. Serbuan belasan korporasi penghisap pemegang Kuasa Pertambangan yang siap dan telah menjadi sentra-sentra keuangan para pemilik perusahaan yang berdandan ala pemerintah atau pemerintah yang berdandan ala pemilik perusahaan (sungguh sangat sulit dibedakan). Tak bisa dipungkiri, pengaruh neoliberalisme itu menjadikan politik sebagai pengelola ekonomi belaka dan para politisi/pemerintah adalah administrator perusahaan. Penguasa baru bukan pemerintah, mereka tak perlu menjadi seperti itu. Pemerintah hanya bertanggung jawab mengelola bisnis di daerah kekuasaannya sendiri.

Salah satu akal-akalan korporasi penghisap yang paling sering didengungkan adalah pertumbuhan ekonomi perusahaan akan membawa pemerataan kemakmuran yang lebih baik dan pertumbuhan tingkat tenaga kerja. Tapi tidak demikian kenyataannya. Sama seperti pertumbuhan kuasa politik seorang tuan besar yang di kota sana, dimana pertumbuhan itu tidak akan membawa konsekuensi pertumbuhan kuasa politik subjek-subjeknya (ke arah sebaliknya), kekuasaan absolut modal finansial tidaklah meningkatkan pemerataan kemakmuran dan tidak pula menciptakan lapangan kerja yang luas bagi masyarakat. Kemiskinan dan instabilitasi tenaga kerja merupakan konsekuensi-konsekuensi strukturalnya. Kita juga tahu bahwa ada Corporate social responsibility (CSR) tapi, proses pembagian dana CSR tidaklah menjamin adanya perbaikan kualitas hidup masyarakat sekitar perusahaan karena proses pemanfaatannya yang didominasi oleh pemerintah setempat. Demikian juga dengan produk “cuci tangan” lainnya, Community Development (Comdev), dana yang diperuntukkan pengembangan masyarakat juga sangat jauh dari akses masyarakat sekitar. Bahkan di beberapa daerah, dana comdev dimasukkan dalam APBD sehingga pengelolaannya didominasi oleh pemerintah daerah dan masyarakat hanya dapat menikmati langsung bantuan-bantuan yang bersifat ”belas kasihan” itupun bukan langsung kepada masyarakat tapi melalui pemerintah setempat. Hal seperti itu sudah dengan jelas dipraktekan oleh salah satu perusahaan yang telah memporak-porandakan wilayah timur pulau Kabaena yang kini meninggalkan ”coreng merah” ditengah hijaunya hutan Lambale.

Bagi mereka, menjadikan warga lokal sebagai buruh dengan distribusi upah yang timpang adalah ”keadilan” yang layak, pun demikian, warga-warga itu girangnya bukan main saat menjadi bagian dari korporasi tersebut. Padahal, sebagai pemilik lahan mereka berhak mendapat lebih dibanding apa yang mereka nikmati sekarang ini. Tampaknya para komprador neoliberal itu paham betul akan kondisi psikologis warga kampung yang demikian adanya, konflik horizontal maupun vertikal sering terjadi antara yang pro perusahaan yang terdiri dari aparat kecamatan/desa, buruh dan keluarganya dengan warga lokal yang menolak beroperasinya perusahaan di wilayah mereka. Bagi para ”pencerah-pencerah” yang berusaha melakukan penyadaran terhadap warga lokal akan hak mereka, penangkapan oleh aparat adalah ”hadiah termanis” yang diberikan oleh para pengkultus absurditas neoliberalisme itu. Seperti yang terjadi beberapa waktu lalu, dimana ditangkapnya kawan-kawan yang bersama warga melakukan aksi protes terhadap beroperasinya perusahaan di kawasan Kabaena timur dan Kabaena barat. Dan yang baru saja terjadi di kawasan Malapulu yang masuk dalam teritori kecamatan Kabaena Selatan, saat beberapa warga lokal menuntut perusahaan yang menggusur tanah tempat mereka selama ini menggantungkan hidupnya sejak zaman kolonial hingga neoliberalisme — sejak Repelita hingga Block Grand yang kemudian diklaim oleh pihak perusahaan sebagai tanah milik pemerintah dan mereka telah membelinya. Sudah bisa diterka apa yang dilakukan oleh komprador neoliberal tersebut; intimidasi. Intimidasi yang dilakukan oleh ”Profesional kekerasan yang legal” (sebut saja begitu), para profesional yang seharusnya menjamin keamanan rakyat yang ”membayar” mereka dengan pajak, yang justru tunduk dengan upah yang hanya sedikit lebih baik ketimbang buruh dan kemudian memperlakukan warga yang hendak melakukan aktivitas kesehariannya di tanah ulayat mereka sendiri layaknya teroris yang telah meledakkan istana negara. Jika demikian adanya, yang menjadi pertanyaan kemudian, adakah yang mau digarap bila kekerasan telah menjadi hukum pasar? Mana kekerasan yang legal dan mana yang ilegal? Monopoli kekerasan macam apakah yang bisa pura-pura dipunyai oleh kuasa politik tuan yang babak belur itu, bila permainan bebas antara supply dan demand menentang monopoli tersebut? Tidak-kah hal ini menunjukkan kejahatan terorganisir antara pemerintah dan pemilik modal terjalin dengan sangat rapi?. Dengan demikian ”monopoli kekerasan” bukan cuma milik penjahat saja, pemerintah dan korporasi penghisap telah mengobralnya.

Tampaknya seperti itulah modernitas ganjil yang coba diterapkan tuan-tuan yang di kota sana kepada kami warga kampung. Modernitas yang maju ke depan sekaligus mundur jauh kebelakang karena punya kesamaan dengan abad-abad brutal zaman kolonial, ketimbang masa depan yang tenang dan rasional dalam novel dan film sains-fiksi.

Tuan-tuan, jangan teruskan ide absurd kalian yang ingin mengistimewakan kawasan pertambangan sebagai ”zona aman neoliberalisme”, kami hanya ingin agar anak cucu kami kelak bisa menikmati eksotisme pulau Kabaena. Tuan, jangan jadikan kekayaan alam kami seperti sebuah ”kutukan”. Bukan-kah lebih baik jika tuan mengistimewakan lahan-lahan pertanian sebagai kawasan ekonomi yang potensi merusaknya lebih kecil dan bisa langsung dikelola oleh rakyat yang sebagaian besar telah menggantungkan hidupnya dari sektor tersebut? Tuan memang sudah sukses dengan membuat daerah ini menjadi kompetitif, dengan semangat tinggi berlomba merampok semua yang tersisa. Tentu saja tuan bukan seorang pemalas, tuan sangat rajin menghancurkan setiap harapan yang dibangun susah payah. Ahh..sudahlah, model sosial yang tuan tawarkan sudah terkapar, tak usah ditutupi lagi dengan topeng-topeng nujum masa lalu tentang gemilangnya masa yang akan datang.

Sebelum mengakhiri cerita ini, saya akan memberikan sebuah petikan kalimat dari C. L. R. James, untuk tuan besar di kota sana; “ Time would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place…before I discovered that it is not quality of goods and utility which matter, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there”. sekian

ada yang bertanya: 32 propinsi hidup dalam bayang-bayang kasta nomer dua, sebagian malah paria, hanya diingat kala bencana menimpa. tetapi Jakarta selalu jadi lakon sandiwara

ada yang mendebat; itu pantas sebab Jakarta adalah ibukota!!!…

Loh!!!, ibukota bukannya melayani, kenapa Jakarta mesti selalu dilayani? Jakarta itu seperti Perawan Tua yang diminati para Duda..

ada usul; kenapa kita tidak isolasi Jakarta saja, menghentikan kontak apalagi setoran. Ada wabah yang menghantui kota itu dan itu berasal dari kutukan masa silam..

Ini liar, debat yang lain, sama saja dengan PRRI…

Lohh!! melawan Jakarta bukan berarti mengkhianati Indonesia khan? ada harapan di 32 propinsi, satu propinsi hilang tidak berarti banyak..

Tetapi PRRI tidak mungkin di ulang. Dulu intelektual berontak karena teori, sekarang intelektual kritis dibayar TV.. Lalu, kenapa kita mesti menerima takdir yang bisa dihindari? kenapa jemari masih patuh memberikan suara? demokrasi telah menjadi keputusan berpasrah diri..

Usul lain; kita mesti mnyiapkan perahu besar untuk keluar dari banjir demokrasi. Caranya mudah; “Jangan tolol lagi”, berdiamlah pada saat pemungutan suara..

Demokrasi berubah jadi petaka karena kepercayaan diperdagangkan dalam pasar tanpa partisipasi.. Rakyat menanam, pengusaha yang membeli, intelektual menarik riba dan orang-orang superbodoh yang membawanya pergi tanpa menyisakan bibit untuk rakyat.. Tidak ada alasan lagi masuk bilik suara… Berdiamlah!!!!

Hempasan batu domino terakhir, diskusipun usai, kami lupa yang dibicarakan tadi. Esok kami akan nonton debat di tipi lagi….

Report from: 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC)

Perubahan iklim telah menjadi ancaman bagi keberlanjutan spesies manusia di bumi. Bagi masyarakat di negara berkembang, yang rentan terdampak, ancaman itu kian serius karena upaya adaptasi dan mitigasi terhadap perubahan iklim rentan dibajak koruptor.

Pesan tentang pentingnya mewaspadai korupsi dalam perubahan iklim ditegaskan dalam International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) Ke-14 di Bangkok, Thailand, pada 10-13 November 2010. Sejumlah sesi secara khusus membahas korupsi yang bisa menggagalkan upaya adaptasi dan mitigasi terhadap perubahan iklim itu.

Laporan teranyar Global Humanitarian Forum (The Anatomy of Silent Crisis, Geneva, 2009) menyebutkan, perubahan iklim menyebabkan kematian 300.000 orang dalam setahun dan berdampak pada hidup 325 juta orang. Banjir, kekeringan, topan, naiknya muka air laut, gelombang panas, gagal panen, hingga meningkatnya penyebaran berbagai penyakit hanya sebagian contoh dari dampak perubahan iklim yang telah hadir.

Namun, negara yang paling terdampak dan membutuhkan bantuan untuk beradaptasi adalah juga yang paling korup. Berdasarkan survei Transparency International (TI) 2010, hampir semua negara rentan terhadap perubahan iklim memiliki Indeks Persepsi Korupsi (IPK) di bawah 3,5 (dari skala 10).

Negara dengan IPK terendah adalah Somalia, yaitu 1,1, diikuti Myanmar dengan nilai 1,4 dan Afganistan juga 1,4. Indonesia, sebagai salah satu negara kepulauan yang juga rentan terdampak, memiliki IPK 2,8 atau peringkat ke-110 dari 178 negara yang disurvei.

Korupsi jalan terus

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dan Bank Dunia memperkirakan komunitas internasional membutuhkan dana 170 miliar-765 miliar dollar AS per tahun untuk menghadapi perubahan iklim. Walau jumlah dana yang dibutuhkan sudah dihitung, tetap saja belum ada kesepakatan bagaimana uang itu dikumpulkan, didistribusikan, dan dimonitoring. Di tengah ketidakpastian ini, korupsi sudah mengintai.

UNFCCC di Kopenhagen 2009 berkomitmen mengalokasikan dana 30 miliar dollar AS pada 2010-2012, dan menjadi 100 miliar dollar AS pada 2020, untuk membantu negara berkembang beradaptasi terhadap perubahan iklim. ”Semakin besar dana yang mengalir, potensi korupsi juga besar,” kata Iftekhar Zaman, Direktur Eksekutif TI Banglades.

Besarnya potensi korupsi dalam pengelolaan dana untuk menghadapi perubahan iklim, kata Iftekhar, karena belum ada kemajuan dan perubahan integritas di kalangan politisi, khususnya di negara berkembang. ”Lebih dari separuh politisi korup,” katanya, mengacu pada studi yang dilakukan di Banglades. Apa yang terjadi jika uang itu digelontorkan sebelum politisi korup menyadari gentingnya dampak perubahan iklim terhadap rakyat?

Hakan Tropp, penasihat pada Program Pembangunan PBB (UNDP) Water Governance Facility (WGF), menilai, korupsi menyebabkan biaya adaptasi kian mahal, tak terjangkau pendanaan yang ada, dan jauh dari sasaran. ”Padahal, yang paling terdampak adalah yang paling miskin,” katanya.

Menurut Hakan, potensi korupsi juga besar jika mekanisme yang dipakai masih sama seperti proyek multinasional sebelumnya. ”Apakah kita masih mau mengirimkan dana melalui proyek Bank Dunia seperti sebelumnya?” ujarnya. Dia menyarankan agar dicari terobosan baru yang lebih transparan dan tidak top down dalam penyaluran dana adaptasi ke negara yang membutuhkan.

Pengalaman masa lalu mengajarkan, proyek yang didanai melalui lembaga keuangan multinasional dengan mekanisme top down dan minim partisipasi lokal rentan dikorup, selain juga salah sasaran dan memicu konflik. Direktur Bank Dunia Sri Mulyani, yang menjadi pembicara dalam pembukaan konferensi, menyatakan, Bank Dunia kini punya komitmen tinggi terhadap pemberantasan korupsi.

Belajar dari kegagalan proyek yang disalurkan lewat pemerintah, menurut Hakan, penentu kebijakan global kini juga tengah menjajaki kemungkinan penyaluran dana adaptasi melalui sektor swasta. Namun, di banyak negara berkembang, sektor swasta juga tak kalah korup dibandingkan pemerintahnya.

Menurut Hakan, prasyarat yang harus disiapkan sebelum menerapkan program adaptasi di negara berkembang adalah meningkatkan integritas pemerintah dan sektor swastanya. Selain itu, juga meningkatkan partisipasi gerakan sipil untuk turut mengawasi.

Susannah Kinghan, konsultan dari Water Integrity Network (WIN), menyebutkan, salah satu titik rentan korupsi dalam adaptasi adalah sektor air. Mengingat besarnya dampak perubahan iklim pada masalah air, alokasi dana ke sektor ini juga besar.

Masalah menjadi lebih kompleks karena air lekat dengan masalah politik dan konflik lintas batas negara. Ia mencontohkan Sungai Yordan, yang menjadi sumber konflik antara Israel, Jordania, dan Palestina. Contoh lain adalah konflik perebutan air Sungai Mekong yang melibatkan China, Myanmar, hingga Thailand.

Susannah juga menyebutkan tentang tren korupsi berupa penyesatan informasi untuk menutupi tanggung jawab yang mestinya dipikul pemerintah. Ia mencontohkan banjir di Pakistan dan Banglades, yang oleh otoritas setempat disebutkan karena perubahan iklim. Padahal, banjir itu juga karena kerusakan hutan dan buruknya tata kelola air.

Contoh itu mengingatkan pada kasus banjir dan longsor di Wasior, Papua Barat, serta kasus lain di Indonesia. Pemerintah biasa menyalahkan alam. Membuka akses informasi, kata Susannah, bisa mencegah korupsi karena itu artinya publik turut berpartisipasi aktif sejak dari perencanaan hingga pengawasan.

Upaya mengatasi perubahan iklim mensyaratkan perubahan cara pandang untuk tak lagi melihat permasalahan sebagai business as usual, apalagi korupsi as usual. Namun, faktanya, negara maju, pembuang emisi karbon terbesar, sibuk bersiasat untuk menghindar dari tanggung jawab. Di negara berkembang, korupsi masih jalan terus dan belum ada tanda menjadi lebih baik.

Report from: 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference

Upaya mereduksi emisi karbon melalui pelestarian hutan atau REDD+ bisa jadi adalah peluang terbaik untuk menyelamatkan hutan yang tersisa sekaligus memperlambat laju pemanasan global. Namun, mekanisme ini juga bisa jadi ladang baru korupsi.

Pengurangan emisi karbon dari deforestasi dan degradasi hutan (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation/REDD+) menjadi kontroversi sejak awal kemunculannya. Bagi penentangnya, mekanisme ini dinilai sebagai siasat negara maju, yang merupakan emiter karbon terbesar, untuk lari dari tanggung jawab. Daripada mengubah gaya hidup agar lebih ramah lingkungan, mereka justru menawarkan uang kepada negara berkembang asalkan mau melestarikan hutan yang tersisa.

Di tengah kontroversi itu, negosiasi REDD+ ternyata paling cepat kemajuannya dibandingkan proyek perubahan iklim lainnya, seperti transfer teknologi dan bantuan dana untuk adaptasi. Negara-negara berkembang yang memiliki hutan, seperti Indonesia, dengan gembira menyambut REDD+, lebih karena melihat besaran dana yang akan didapat. Menurut Organisasi Pangan dan Pertanian (FAO), Indonesia memiliki 94 juta hektar hutan dari total 214 hutan tropis di 10 negara Asia Tenggara sehingga berkepentingan besar terhadap REDD+.

Penelitian Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) menyebutkan, jika Indonesia sukses mengurangi deforestasi sebesar 5 persen saja, kita bisa memperoleh 765 juta dollar AS dalam setahun melalui mekanisme REDD+. Jika berhasil mereduksi deforestasi hingga 30 persen, bisa memperoleh pendapatan hingga 4,5 miliar dollar AS setahun.

Dalam diskusi panel di International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) Ke-14 di Bangkok, Tim Clairs, penasihat senior UN-REDD Programme, mengatakan, dana yang telah siap untuk mekanisme REDD+ melalui lembaganya mencapai 4 miliar dollar AS dalam kurun 2009-2012. Dana ini di luar kerja sama langsung antarnegara, seperti komitmen bantuan 1 miliar dollar AS yang diperoleh Indonesia dari Norwegia yang ditandatangani tahun ini.

Rentan korupsi

Namun, di tengah antusiasme negara donor dan juga negara penerima, Bernd Markus Liss, penasihat kebijakan hutan dari Kerja Sama Teknis Jerman di Filipina, mengatakan, REDD+ rentan menumbuhsuburkan korupsi. Potensi korupsi dari REDD+ bisa terjadi sejak proses penentuan lahan, penghitungan nilai karbon yang rentan dimanipulasi, munculnya broker karbon, hingga penghilangan akses komunitas lokal terhadap hutan.

Menurut kajian UNDP (Tackling Corruption Risk in Climate Change, 2010), celah korupsi dalam penentuan lahan sangat mungkin terjadi dengan menyuap petugas mengeluarkan terlebih dulu kayu-kayu bernilai tinggi di area konsesi. Selain itu, perusahaan multinasional ataupun industri agrobisnis juga bisa menyuap pejabat untuk memasukkan lahan yang mereka punyai dalam proyek REDD+.

Liss menyarankan pemberian lisensi, audit, dan investasi REDD+ dilakukan secara transparan. Bahkan, transparansi saja tidak cukup jika hal itu tidak memasukkan aspek kemanfaatan bagi masyarakat tempatan. Jika masyarakat sekitar hutan justru bertambah sengsara setelah hutan mereka dimasukkan dalam proyek REDD+, konflik pasti akan terjadi.

Kekhawatiran tentang pembajakan oleh koruptor juga disampaikan Peter Larmour dari The Australian National University. Menurut dia, jika program REDD+ dikorup, masyarakat lokal sekitar hutan akan tambah sengsara. Sebab, di satu sisi, REDD+ membuat mereka kehilangan akses untuk memanfaatkan hutan secara langsung.

Karena itu, parameter antikorupsi telah disepakati sebagai kunci bagi kesuksesan program REDD+ sehingga PBB mewajibkan negara yang ikut program ini membuat sistem yang terukur, dapat dilaporkan, dan dapat diverifikasi. Pemerintah Indonesia meresponsnya dengan membuat Strategi Nasional (Stranas) REDD+.

Namun, kesangsian masih tinggi mengingat sektor kehutanan selama ini merupakan ladang subur korupsi. Dan korupsi pula yang menggagalkan program konservasi dan rehabilitasi hutan. Bahkan, dalam Stranas REDD+ 2010 disebutkan, sektor hutan lekat dengan praktik mafia hukum.

Ahmad Dermawan, peneliti dari CIFOR, mengatakan, negara-negara yang berpeluang mendapatkan dana REDD+ adalah negara yang memiliki reputasi buruk dalam pemberantasan korupsi, salah satunya adalah Indonesia.

Ditetapkannya salah satu negosiator REDD+ Indonesia dalam Konferensi Internasional tentang Perubahan Iklim di Kopenhagen, Wandojo Siswanto, sebagai tersangka korupsi oleh Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi menguatkan kesangsian tentang integritas para pihak, terutama dari kalangan pemerintah. Mantan Direktur Perencanaan dan Keuangan Kementerian Kehutanan ini diduga menerima suap dari Direktur PT Masaro Radiokom Anggoro Widjojo dalam perkara pengadaan Sistem Komunikasi Radio Terpadu.

Selain potensi korupsi dari kalangan pengelola negara, Dermawan juga mengingatkan, beberapa perusahaan (baik skala nasional maupun internasional), yang sebelumnya terlibat penghancuran hutan dan lingkungan, kini ramai-ramai mengajukan proposal REDD+. Karena itu, semestinya ada upaya untuk melacak rekam jejak sektor swasta agar program REDD+ tidak menjadi area korupsi dan pencucian uang.

Julie Walters dari Australian Institute of Criminology mengatakan, korupsi kehutanan sangat dekat dengan kejahatan pencucian uang. Karena itu, untuk mengungkap kasus ini salah satunya adalah dengan melacak uang hasil kejahatan sektor kehutanan ini.

Namun, menurut Ajit Joy, Country Manager UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Indonesia, upaya mengungkap pencucian uang ini tidak mudah dilakukan. Apalagi hal ini juga melibatkan sindikat kejahatan transnasional.

Dalam kasus di Indonesia, menurut Ketua Dewan Pengurus Transparency International Indonesia Todung Mulya Lubis, masalahnya menjadi lebih rumit lagi karena sejumlah perusahaan kayu juga memiliki bank sendiri sehingga uang hasil dari korupsi di sektor kehutanan bisa dengan mudah dicuci.

Tanpa memperbaiki komitmen antikorupsi para pihak, REDD+ tampaknya akan menjadi ladang baru bagi korupsi baru. Dan rakyat sekitar hutan menjadi pihak yang paling rentan terdampak dan secara global mitigasi perubahan iklim bisa gagal….

Note: Indigenous Environmental Network has been organizing to stop the unjust and dangerous UN REDD scheme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) since it was announced at the UN Climate Convention in Bali, Indonesia in 2007.  Below is their document on their Four Principles on Climate Justice.  Below that is a link to their REDD booklet which outlines in detail the arguments against REDD.

FOUR PRINCIPLES for CLIMATE JUSTICE

“Industrialized society must redefine its’ relationship with the sacredness of Mother Earth”

1. Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Leave the coal in the hole – the oil in the soil – the tar sand in the land. Offshore accidents prove oil and water don’t mix. Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. Stop it at the source. Limit people’s consumption. Efficiency is meaningless without sufficiency. The transition to a low-carbon economy is not just about technology but about re-distributing economic and ecological space. In recognizing the root causes of climate change, people of the world must call upon the industrialized countries and the world to work towards decreasing dependency on fossil fuels. Demand a call for a moratorium on all new exploration for oil, gas and coal as a first step towards the full phase-out of fossil fuels, without nuclear power, with a just transition to sustainable jobs, energy and environment.

2. Demand Real and Effective Solutions

End the promotion of false solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, using forests and agriculture as offsets, agro-fuels, carbon storage and sequestration, clean coal technologies, geoengineering, mega hydro dams and nuclear power. These allow the rich industrialized countries to avoid their responsibility to take major changes. False solutions allow polluting corporations to increase their profits; allow Northern countries to disregard their high levels of consumption and expand production and release of greenhouse gas emissions and conduct “business as usual” practices. Promote a just transition to a low-carbon society that protects people’s rights, jobs and well-being.

3. Industrialized – Developed Countries take Responsibility

The burden of adjustment to the climate crisis must be borne by those who created it. This means:

o Demand industrialized countries agree to an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol for the second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 under which developed countries must agree to significant domestic emissions reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms that mask the failure of actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

o Based on the principle of historical common but differentiated responsibilities, demand

developed countries to commit with quantifiable goals of emission reduction that will allow the return of the concentration of greenhouse gases to 300 parts per million (ppm), limiting the increase in the average world temperature to a maximum of 1 degree Celsius.

o A minimum of 95% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries by 2050 based on 1990 levels.

o An end to over-production for over-consumption, and a dramatic reduction in wasteful

consumption and production of waste by Northern and Southern elites.

o Developed countries, assuming their historical responsibility must recognize and honor their climate and ecological debt in all of its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution to climate change. Restore to developing countries the atmospheric space that is occupied by their greenhouse gas emissions. This implies the decolonization of the atmosphere through the reduction and absorption of their emissions.

o Demand financial support from the North to the South to help with the cost of adjusting to the effects of climate change and continuing to develop along sustainable lines and it must be subject to democratic control.

o Honor these debts as part of a broader debt to Mother Earth by adopting and implementing the Cochabamba People’s Accord and the proposed Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. The focus must not be only on financial compensation, but also on restorative justice, understood as the restitution of integrity to our Mother Earth and all Life.

4. Living in a Good Way on Mother Earth

o Climate justice calls upon governments, corporations and the peoples of the world to restore, revaluate and strengthen the knowledge, wisdom and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, affirmed in our experiences and the proposal for “Living in a Good Way”, recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship.

o The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human beings. The capitalist system has imposed upon us a mindset that seeks competition, progress and unlimited growth. This production-consumption regime pursues profits without limit, separating human beings from nature. It establishes a mindset that seeks to dominate nature, turning everything into a commodity: the land, water, air (carbon), forests, agriculture, flora and fauna, biodiversity, genes and even indigenous traditional knowledge. Under capitalism, Mother Earth is turned into nothing more than a source of raw materials. Human beings are seen as consumers and a means of production, that is, persons whose worth is defined by what they have, not by what they are. Humanity is at a crossroads: we can either continue taking the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or take the road of harmony with nature and respect for the Circle of Life.

o The “shared vision” for “Long-term Cooperative Action” (UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group) must not be reduced in climate change negotiations to defining temperature-increase and greenhouse gas concentration limits in the atmosphere. Rather, it must undertake a balanced, comprehensive series of financial, technological and adaptation measures, measures addressing capacity building, production patterns and consumption, and other essential measures such as recognition of the rights of Mother Earth in order to restore harmony with nature.

~Digging Out the Root Causes of Climate Change – Ending CO2colonalism~

For more information:

INDIGENOUS ENVIROMENTAL NETWORK – Native Energy and Climate Campaign

Main office: P.O. Box 485, Bemidji, Minnesota USA 56619

Telephone: + 1 218 751 4967; Fax: + 1 218 751 0561

Email: ien@igc.org or ienenergy@igc.org; Web: www.ienearth.org

For More information on the dangers of REDD, go to: http://www.ienearth.org/REDD/index.html

Having analysed past experience from the terrible bloodbath of 1965 through to the movement that overthrew Soeharto, in part two of their perspectives document the Indonesian Marxists look at the present situation facing the working class. Is there such a thing as a “progressive bourgeoisie” in Indonesia today? What is the impact of the crisis on the Indonesian economy and what are the prospects for the coming period?

The bourgeoisie now

After the hammer blow of the 1998 movement, the bourgeoisie could no longer rely on a system based on a monolithic party. The masses have decisively rejected GOLKAR and it is unlikely to ever regain its past glory. So, what we have now is a bourgeois multiparty system, where we have 6-8 parties each gaining between 5-20% of the votes. Not one party holds a majority. The 1998 blow has still left the ruling class fractured, but at the end of the day they all still band together. Immediately after the 2009 election, six parties formed a coalition giving them a majority of 421 seats out of 560.

The Massa Aksi in 1998 had also delivered a huge blow to the bourgeois state. Even though many of its reactionary laws are still in place, the state can no longer openly implement them. The army and the police can no longer be used openly and arbitrarily to crush the movement. However, when the movement becomes a potential threat, the state employs all its machinery to repress it. The attempt of PAPERNAS to run in the 2009 election was one example; the party was not only prevented from participating through electoral regulations but also physically attacked.

The military was still intact. While formally the Dwifungsi ABRI has been dismantled, its real structure, the Military Territorial Command (KODAM, KODIM, KOREM, KORAMIL, BABINSA), is still in place. It is also still dominant in politics. We only need to remind ourselves that the current president of Indonesia is a military man.

However, it would be wrong to think that because the ruling class is fractured into many different parties that it is therefore weak. On the contrary, the forces of New Order are becoming more confident. Now it can impose the dictatorship of capital under the disguise of democracy. They have even gone as far as proposing to grant Soeharto the status of national hero. Such action would not have been possible five or ten years ago.

Indonesia in the global economic crisis

While the economic indicators seem to point to the fact that Indonesia is on a recovery track after being hit by the 2008/2009 global financial crisis, this is built on very shaky ground. The major capitalist countries are experiencing a jobless recovery, and some countries have even entered into a new crisis. Recently Greece plunged into a crisis that shook the world economy despite the hopeful assurances of the bourgeois commentators that the crisis in Greece, albeit a small country, would not affect the global economy. At the beginning of the Greek crisis, the Indonesian government was confident that its economy would not be affected. However, from April 30 to May 24, the IHSG (Jakarta Composite Index) dropped from 2971 to 2514, more than 15% in 3 weeks.

The Greek government has been forced to implement an austerity measure, cutting their budget by 30 billion euros over three years. Workers are being asked to pay for the capitalist crisis. Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Britain – which are larger economies than Greece – are in a similar situation. On May 29, Spain followed the step of the Greek government, passing an austerity plan that will cut 15 billion euros spending which includes a pay cut for civil servants. This is on top of the 50 billion euro austerity package announced earlier in January. The new Cameron-Clegg coalition government in Britain, on May 24, after just two weeks in power, took its first steps in attacking the workers by announcing 6 billion pounds of spending cuts. On May 26, the Italian government under Berlusconi unveiled a plan to slash 24.9 billion euros from their state budget, which includes a three-year wage freeze for public sector workers. On May 13, the Portuguese government announced tax increases and spending cuts. All these austerity measures have been met with demonstrations, however none as big as the ones we have been seeing in Greece.

The world economy is slowly emerging from the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. However, there won’t be a return to “normality”. The crisis marks the end of an epoch; economically it marks the end of a welfare-state epoch and politically it signifies the end of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” epoch. As the above picture has shown, we are entering the age of austerity. An outright depression from the 2008/2009 recession was averted by an unprecedented bailout, estimated to be in the region of $14 trillion. John Hawksworth, PwC’s head of macroeconomics, explained: “We have been able to survive this major economic shock by throwing money at it. But who is to say in ten years it won’t happen again? So we should be planning to get back into surplus so that we have some money to throw at it [next time].”

The IMF has pointed out that governments around the world have added, on average, a debt load of 20% of GDP and are projected to add another 20% by 2015. The IMF advice to the G20 countries is massive cuts in expenditures to the tune of 8.7% of GDP.

Economically, this will mean that there will be a period of jobless recovery, with lower demand. While Indonesia’s economy is not as reliant on exports as other Asian economies, the prolonged slump in export demand will destroy Indonesia’s home industry. Already the Indonesian government is trying to overcome this lowering of export demand through free trade agreements such as ACFTA (ASEAN-China Free Trade Area) and AIFTA. However, this wishful thinking will be shattered immediately. China and India also have had their export markets cut due to the crisis, as the demand from North America and Europe has fallen, thus they also seek to open new markets for their exports. Being a weaker economy, Indonesia will not be able to compete with the products from China and India.

Capitalism has developed an unsolvable contradiction; on the one hand there is the contradiction between private ownership of the means of production and the collective social character of production itself, and on the other hand there is the contradiction between the nation-state and the international character of the economy. Free trade and protectionism, implemented to varying degrees in different countries depending on the correlation of economic forces of those countries, are the methods that the capitalists use to overcome these contradictions. In extreme cases, they resort to military measures: the two world wars and the numerous “small” wars in the course of last century.

What is needed is the free exchange of the fruits of the people labour’s carried out in the interest of the workers and peasants not for the profitability of private capital, which can only be achieved if the means of production and distribution are expropriated out of the hands of the capitalists and put under the democratic control of the workers and peasants. Socialist countries can then democratically and voluntarily enter into trade with each other not with the purpose of conquering each other’s markets and squeezing profit for private capital, but to fulfil human needs.

The socialists in Indonesia will have to start from the demand against free trade agreements (ACFTA, AIFTA, etc), as this is the natural reaction of the workers and peasants who rightly see such agreements will hurt their livelihoods. However, starting from this “minimum” demand we have to connect it to a socialist perspective, to the question of power. We have to say no to capitalist free trade, and also no to capitalist protectionism. The capitalist regime of SBY cannot be trusted to deal with the current economic crisis, as we have seen how the “Reformasi” government dealt with the 1997/98 economic crisis by auctioning off state properties and increasing exploitation, i.e. by forcing the workers and peasants to pay for the crisis. The only solution is for the Indonesian workers to be in power under a socialist programme, with the creation of the Socialist Federation of South East Asia, reviving Tan Malaka’s demand of United ASLIA (Asia-Australia).

The crisis and mass consciousness

A crisis can have a dampening effect on the mood of the masses, and this is what we are seeing in general now. At the moment, we are not seeing massive worldwide mobilization after the recent recession. This is because the economic cycle and consciousness do not have an automatic proportional relationship. This is similar to the 1929 Great Depression that forced the wider mass of workers to lower their heads instead of mobilising. Only in 1934 did the workers start to move, once there was the beginning of a recovery.

Added to this is the weight of history on the shoulders of the world working class: with the ossification of reformism for a whole generation since the post world-war boom and the fall of the USSR which was accompanied by a capitalist ideological offensive. This has created a whole period filled with confusion and ideological backsliding. Alien ideas penetrated the workers’ movement. Pessimism and cynicism became prevalent with many people deserting the movement altogether, leaving the movement in the hands of reformists and careerists of the Blair type.

During this very difficult period, our international tendency stood firm; maintaining the banner of Marxism and a revolutionary class policy when everyone was abandoning it. Events have proved that we were right. We are now living in a period of turmoil, economically and politically. This period is shaking the consciousness of the working class which was burdened with reformist illusions and pessimism in the past. However, more importantly, it is creating a new generation of a young working class which is completely free from reformist illusions. The new period of austerity will create for the first time in the history of capitalism a new generation of youth who will not have a better living standard than their parents. This will be a new generation which will be raised in a period of turbulence, with wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions unfolding across the world. In Indonesia too, a new generation is emerging, one which has never lived through the period of reaction under Soeharto, one which has witnessed the failure of “Reformasi”, and now the failure of capitalism worldwide.

Economically, in a broad historical sense, the objective situation for socialism has been ripe and mature for some time. However, what is lacking now, and has been lacking, is a revolutionary leadership with a correct idea. The past half century saw the leadership of the movement in the hands of reformists and Stalinists – the latter is actually nothing more than a revolutionary phrase-mongering form of reformism. In the coming period, the leadership of the movement most likely will still be in the hands of the reformists as the forces of Marxism are still too small. However, the masses will learn through experiences and see the blind alley of reformism, and will either force their leaders far to the left or remove these leaders and place new ones in their place. During this period, the ideas of Marxism will start gaining ground. This will be a protracted process – not in months but maybe in years or decades – with leaps and bounds, but the direction is clear. The most advanced layers of workers and youth will find themselves moving towards revolutionary Marxism.

The “progressive national bourgeoisie”

The history of Indonesia (see Appendix “The History of Capitalist Development in Indonesia”) has shown that since the 16th century the social, economic, and political development of the country has been linked to the birth and development of capitalism. It is because of this that Indonesia’s class development has never followed the “classic” class development of the advanced capitalist countries. Even Indonesia’s feudalism was affected by Dutch rule as the colonial rule brought the feudal rulers to their knees and then used them as their local ruling agents, tying them to imperialism.

And what of the national bourgeoisie? The national bourgeoisie came too late on the scene of history in Indonesia, and they were born under the yoke of imperialism, which did not make them more progressive in any way but subservient to imperialism and foreign capital.

It is instructive to see how the nationalist movement in Indonesia was born in the early 20th century. The Indonesian nationalist movement was initially led by intellectuals who rested upon the peasants and the newly emerging proletariat (mainly plantation workers, railway workers, pawnshop clerks). The Indonesian bourgeoisie was non-existent in the nationalist movement from the beginning. The nascent Indonesian bourgeois, i.e. the small merchants and traders, formed Sarekat Dagang Islam (Islamic Commercial Union) in 1911. But its original purpose was to protect the interests of Javanese batik merchants from the increasing competition from the Indies Chinese traders, and not to advance the liberation of the East Indies people from Dutch rule. Within a year this organization caught the popular imagination of poor peasants and workers of Indonesia who flocked to it in the thousands and overwhelmed the merchant base of the organization. In 1912, the SDI dropped its commercial name – and effectively its merchant base – to become Sarekat Islam (Islamic Union), the first mass political movement in Indonesia which became the mass basis for the Indonesian nationalist movement. The only political party that was of any serious significance at that time was the Indonesian Communist Party, who oriented and was rooted within the Sarekat Islam. So, while SI was the mass basis of the first nationalist movement in Indonesia, the PKI was the only party that provided the Indonesian nationalist movement with a coherent political expression.

The demise of SI and the PKI in 1927 opened the stage for bourgeois-nationalist elements to dominate the movement, albeit this being a period of semi-reaction where the nationalist movement was thrown back. However, there was still no bourgeois class in Indonesia. Instead what we had were intellectuals with a bourgeois nationalist ideology but without a strong native bourgeois class to lean on.

The 1945-49 independence struggle reveals again the reactionary character of these bourgeois-nationalist leaders. They were content at having Indonesia under the Dutch crown and the economic rule of the imperialist forces. The programme of 100% independence was betrayed by the likes of Soekarno, Hatta, and Sjahrir, marked by the signing of the Hague Agreement in 1949.

The bourgeois class started to crystallize after the period of sturm und drang of 1945-1949. Born too late, the Indonesian bourgeoisie was too weak to play any role – let alone a progressive role   and when they did play a role, they sided with Soeharto and the foreign capital behind him in the bloody massacre of millions of Indonesians. The PKI paid a heavy price for their wrong two-stage policy, whereby they subordinated the class struggle to the national struggle and thus sought an alliance with the “progressive” national bourgeoisie. The problem is that there was no progressive national bourgeoisie, not even its shadow. This alliance with the bourgeoisie meant the subordination of the working class programme to the interests of the capitalists, postponing the question of workers taking power, and effectively disarming them. When the reactionary generals struck, not one element of this national bourgeoisie rallied to defend the PKI or stop the massacre of the poor workers and peasants.

In the 32 years under the military dictatorship of Soeharto, the Indonesian national bourgeoisie never lifted a finger to defend even a “bourgeois parliamentary” democracy, which is supposed to be the basic classic task of the bourgeoisie. Instead, they were complicit in the dictatorship. Politically they were impotent and the army had to literally run the government. Economically they are tied to foreign capital, and when they do bark against foreign capital it is only to get a bigger slice of the pie from the exploitation of the workers and peasants, not because of any genuine aspiration to liberate the people from the yoke of imperialism as some on the Left would like to think.

To this day we are still waiting for the arrival on the scene of a “progressive national bourgeoisie” in Indonesia. Some on the Left try to find this class in the person of Rizal Ramli, Prabowo, and others who use nationalist rhetoric. It was not long ago that similar hopes were put on the shoulders of Megawati, Amien Rais, and Gus Dur, who later dashed this hope and earned the nickname “false” reformists. However, there is no such thing as a false reformist. These bourgeois reformers are doing exactly what their historical task is: saving capitalism when it is in its gravest danger.

The National Question

The national question is also still a major issue. Historically, the creation of a united nation state has been the task of the bourgeoisie. In Indonesia, the nation state was created through the struggle against Dutch colonialism. However, under the framework of capitalism, the nation state was put under tremendous pressure. The voluntary union of all different nationalities and ethnicities has turned into its opposite: forceful unity for economic exploitation under the slogan of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”. Regions outside Java have been stripped of their resources and trillions of Rupiah are transferred to Jakarta, the ruling centre of the capitalist. Poverty is tens of times higher outside Jakarta. In the official figure from 1990, the poverty rate in Jakarta was 1.3% while in NTT it was 45.6%, NTB 27.6%, Papua Barat 12.6%, and so on.1 Any dissatisfaction is quickly smashed with the might of the bayonet. Not only economic exploitation, we also see cultural and linguistic repression, where hundreds of ethnicities have been forced to assimilate into Indonesian nationalism and their cultures are reduced to tourist attractions and sterile showcases in TMII.

Indonesia has become a prison house of nationalities. The unity of Indonesia is under real threat with the prospect of turning into a new Balkans. The bourgeoisie has failed to maintain the unity of Indonesia. It has failed to fulfil the main task of the bourgeois democratic revolution.

Whatever unity that came out of the struggle against Dutch colonisation has been squandered by capitalism. This is our starting point. In several provinces, the aspiration for national liberation from Indonesia amongst the toiling masses has become a reality, notably in Aceh and Papua. We oppose any kind of oppression against nationalities, cultures, language and religion. We stand in full solidarity with the oppressed nationalities in their struggle to liberate themselves from the Indonesian prison house. Concretely, this means that we defend unconditionally the democratic rights of the oppressed nationalities to self-determination, up to and including the right to separate.

However, we stand clearly for a class policy. This means that it is our task to point out to our brothers and sisters in Aceh and Papua that their true ally in their liberation is the Indonesian working class. The bourgeois class in Aceh and Papua cannot be trusted and relied on to lead the national liberation movement. When the bourgeois leaders of Aceh and Papua talk of independence from Jakarta, they only wish to exploit their own people without the interference from Jakarta, they only want a bigger share of the pie of exploitation.

One way to win over the trust of our oppressed brothers and sisters, to cut across the national question with the class question, is exactly to tell them that we support their right to self-determination, even their right to separate, and that we will fight to form a workers’ government that will give them that full right to self-determination. With this position, we are telling our brothers and sisters that the Indonesian workers have no interest in oppressing them.

The experience of East Timor is a testament to the fact that genuine liberation cannot be achieved under capitalism, and that the genuine liberation of nationalities in Indonesia is tied to the fight. More than 10 years after independence East Timor’s population is amongst the poorest in the world. It has become a source of intrigues between imperialist powers (Australia, Portugal, China, US and others) to access the vast gas and oil reserves and it is facing growing repression by its own “national government”. Without a change of system in Indonesia, liberated provinces will still be under the economic and political domination of Indonesian imperialism. The only way forward is the formation of a voluntary union of the Socialist Federation of Indonesia, as a first step towards the Socialist Federation of South East Asia and the World Socialist Federation.

Socialism the only way forward

The Indonesian bourgeoisie and the nationalists have proven themselves incapable of moving society forward. They couldn’t even complete the classic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution: agrarian reform, genuine national independence, and democracy. Sixty-five years have passed since the proclamation of Indonesian independence, and none of these tasks have been completed.

The question of land for the peasants is still a pressing problem. The current bourgeoisie, due to its economic position, cannot be expected to carry out a thorough agrarian reform. While in the past the bourgeoisie in the advanced capitalist countries had an interest in putting an end to feudalism, today the Indonesian bourgeoisie are often big landowners themselves.

The task of achieving national independence from the yoke of imperialism is also something that cannot be carried out by the Indonesian bourgeoisie. They are too dependent on foreign capital. Since their birth, they have been happy to be the local busboy of imperialism. Every now and then these bourgeoisie squirm and bark when they feel that they are entitled to a bigger share of the pie, piggybacking on the discontent of the masses in order to use them as a battering ram against their foreign master. Politically impotent, the national bourgeoisie can only lean on the strength of the toiling masses. However, their fear of the rising of the workers and peasants is greater than their aspiration to independence. Once they have gained a concession from their master, they drop their nationalist rhetoric and goals.

On the question of democracy, the historical record of the Indonesian capitalists speaks for itself: 32 years of silence – and even active participation – when basic democratic rights were trampled under Soeharto. Bourgeois democratic rights as seen in advanced capitalist countries are still beyond reach despite the 1998 Reformasi.

It is from here that we define the nature of the coming revolution in Indonesia. The incompleteness of the bourgeois democratic tasks means that the next revolution in Indonesia will have bourgeois democratic characteristics, in the sense that it will have to solve the historical tasks of the bourgeois revolution: agrarian reform, democracy, and national independence from imperialism. The problem is that we do not have a bourgeoisie that can carry out these tasks. The working class is the only class that can therefore carry out this bourgeois democratic revolution. However, the working class, once in power, and in order to carry out these tasks, will proceed directly to the socialist tasks, thus connecting the bourgeois democratic revolution with the socialist revolution.

When we speak of the working class, we mean the social class of wage earners. This is different from the urban poor, an unstable and quite heterogeneous social group prone to social explosions but not capable of becoming the vehicle for the socialist reconstruction of society. Only the working class has this quality, due to its position in production which gives it collective discipline, consciousness, action and organisation which no other class possesses. The working class does not need to be a numerical majority to have a decisive political weight. Even as a minority in Indonesian society it can and must play a leading role in the struggles ahead and become the lever of the socialist revolution. In Russia in 1917 the working class was relatively smaller than in Indonesia today and nevertheless was able to play that role.

In the process of coming to power, the working class will meet resistance from the capitalists – both domestic and foreign. In the course of this struggle, the question of power will be put squarely before them, in the factories and in the state. The bourgeois state is a machinery designed for the rule of the bourgeoisie over the toiling masses, and thus for the toiling masses to be genuinely in power they cannot use the same machinery. Therefore the abolition of the bourgeois state and the creation of a new state – a workers’ state – becomes the order of the day. This is a socialist task.

The bourgeoisie will also use their economic power to resist the workers coming to power. The only way to disarm the bourgeoisie is to expropriate the big capitalists. In addition to that, the wider implementation pro-working class policies (trade union independence, 8-hour day, living wage, pensions, etc) by the new workers’ government will be met with economic sabotage (for example capital flight) by the capitalists. Here, the slogan “factory closed factory occupied” will become concrete. The occupation of factories by workers, the setting up of factory committees, and nationalisation by the new workers’ government will become the order of the day. This is a socialist task.

More important also is the need to create decent jobs for the 20 million Indonesians who are out of work and another 60 million who are forced into the informal sector. This basic task of providing jobs for everyone would require massive economic mobilisation of the whole country, which cannot be achieved without a planned economy under the democratic control of the toiling masses. In this era of finance capital and monopolies, a planned economy can only be achieved with the nationalisation of the banks and the big businesses. This is a socialist task.

The Indonesian proletariat is a minority amongst the toilers in Indonesia. Thus, the workers have to be able to win the other oppressed sectors of society (the poor peasants, fishermen, urban poor, unemployed) to their banner. One way of doing this is to seriously embrace their struggles and explain that the solution to their problems is through the working class programme. The task of creating jobs for the unemployed and urban poor can only be carried out through a nationalised planned economy. Genuine agrarian reform can only be achieved through the nationalisation of the property of the big landowners. Cheap credit can only be granted to poor peasants and fishermen when the banks are nationalised. The nationalised industries will be able to provide cheap tractors, fertilisers, etc for the peasants. In essence, it is the concrete realisation of the slogan: “Workers in power, people will prosper”. To win over the other oppressed sectors of the population, the workers have to provide a determined leadership.

Hence, we see concretely how the bourgeois tasks are connected directly to the socialist tasks. As Lenin said, there is no “artificial Chinese wall” that separates them. The pace and the thoroughness of the flowing over from the bourgeois revolution to the socialist revolution are dictated by two main things: first, the degree of preparedness of the proletariat, moreover the degree of preparedness of its vanguard, of its leadership; second, the prospect of socialist revolution in Southeast Asia and the world. Indonesia by itself does not have a sufficient productive level to be able to build socialism. It needs revolutions in other countries which can then provide mutual economic and technical aid to fulfil the socialist tasks. We cannot build socialism with low productive forces. Like Marx said, “with generalised want, all the old craps will return”. The Indonesian proletarian can make the first breakthrough by carrying out a socialist revolution, which can then spread and burn red the whole region, and even the whole world. A working class which is conscious of this historical task and prepared with a clear programme, this is what we need to build.

The Task Now

The socialist forces around the world are still small and weak, and in Indonesia still very young. However, we are entering a period of convulsions which will open a historical opportunity for us. While there is a sense of urgency to move forward, we should also have a sense of proportion. Our task now is to patiently explain. Serious workers and youth who are looking for a revolutionary alternative will not be satisfied with simple agitational slogans. They want explanations. They want a clear and strong ideology so that they can see through all the confusion.

Our orientation is clear: towards the working class. The 1998 movement has opened up space for the workers’ movement. The next task is to consolidate this gain. The workers need their own independent trade union, one which is free from the state and free from the NGOs as well. The strengthening of the organisation of the workers is the next step, ideologically and organisationally. The 32 years of Soeharto dictatorship have robbed the movement of its traditions, and this is not a small matter. This still has to be overcome.

Trade unions are not the only organisations that the worker needs to build. The workers also need their own political party, with a working class programme and a perspective of taking power. The 40% abstention rate in the 2009 election, an increase from 20% in the 2004 election and 10% in the 1999 election, is a clear indication that the masses have increasingly come to realise that there is nothing fundamentally different between all the current political parties. The boycott of the bourgeois elections has to be transformed into a movement to create a political party based on the workers, peasants and urban poor. Furthermore, this party should be built on the basis of class independence with a clear socialist programme: nationalisation of the main industries under workers’ control, land distribution for poor peasants, a just fishing law favourable to the small fishermen, cancellation of the foreign debt, free universal healthcare and education, jobs for all with a living wage, a decent pension for all, and the right to organise and strike.

The trade unions should take the initiative and leadership in building this party and put forward the slogan “Workers’ party for the workers”. This workers’ party should then embrace the peasants and the urban poor, but never the so-called “progressive” bourgeoisie. The party should not fall into the prejudices of the petty bourgeoisie but maintain a clear workers’ leadership. Only through the leadership of the workers can the whole of the oppressed layers of society be freed. This has to be agitated for widely in the workers’ movement.

This perspectives document is a first draft. It provides a general perspective from which our day-to-day tasks will flow. It is incomplete as much as it only gives us the first stepping stone and it will be fleshed out more and more as we start moving forward and putting it into practice.

Our party is destined to play an important role, as long as we stick to our ideas steadfastly and have a sense of proportion. The coming period will open up so many opportunities for us, but we have to keep our head cool and consider the size of our force. We are still struggling to build the first nuclei of our party. We have the best arsenal which is the ideas of Marxism, and we also have history on our side. The future is for the working class to claim.

http://www.marxist.com

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1 Hal Hill, The Indonesian Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 226.

Twelve years since the magnificent movement that overthrew the hated Soeharto regime in Indonesia it is time to draw a balance sheet of what was achieved and what the state of the movement is now. As the crisis of worldwide capitalism begins to bite, Indonesia too is faced with a new situation, one where the working class and youth will seek to learn the lessons of the past. This two-part document attempts to draw those lessons.

Marxist analysis and perspective on the Indonesian economy and politics is still rather limited for a country which ranks as the fourth most populous country in the world, a country with the largest Muslim population, and the most dominant country in Southeast Asia. The lack of such analysis can be traced back to the historical defeat of the Indonesian working class movement in 1965, which can be said to be as significant as the defeat of the German working class when the Nazis came to power.

With the resurgence of Marxism in Indonesia, the need for an economic and political perspective from a Marxist point of view has become a priority. From a correct perspective flows correct action that can bring the emancipation of the Indonesian working class and other oppressed layers of society: the poor peasants, fishermen and urban poor. The current perspectives document is by no means the first attempt at such perspective, and it won’t be the last, especially with the current turbulent world we are living. It will be the first estimation from which we can gain an understanding of what needs to be done.

Furthermore, a serious revolutionary defines his or her task from an international angle not because of sentimental values of internationalism but because the very fact that capitalism is international. While for all practical purposes, the workers must organise themselves at home as a class with their country as their immediate arena of struggle, the real content of the class struggle is international. Therefore, this document has to be read in conjunction with the 2010 World Perspective document, or else it will lose all its value. We only have to see the political writings of Tan Malaka (Naar de Republik, Massa Aksi, Thesis, etc) where he always started with international appraisals before going into the political perspective of the Indonesian revolution.

The History of “Massa Aksi”

Indonesian history has always been the most important aspect for the movement. The perversion of history by the Soeharto regime was so complete that the first important act of the Indonesian movement was to restore the history of “Massa Aksi”. 32 years of reaction under Soeharto had not only physically destroyed the working class movement but also ideologically stripped the movement completely of its tradition of mass struggle. “Floating masses”, that is the terminology used to describe the kind of society that the Soeharto regime constructed: depoliticized, ahistorical and demobilised.

Thus, for many youth, the vanguard of the movement, relearning the tradition of “Massa Aksi” was a revolutionary act, and it is still a revolutionary act. The Soeharto regime was very afraid of the history of Indonesia, and rightly so because the history of Indonesia is a negation of the “floating mass” concept. One such work which had a very strong influence in this process is the Buru Tetralogy novels written by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. His works are comparable to Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done?, part fiction and part propaganda, a work that influenced a whole generation of Russian youth who were to become the Bolsheviks and lead the October Revolution. Not surprisingly, within one year of publication, the novels were banned by the regime. But this didn’t stop the books from being distributed and read clandestinely by the youth.

The history of Indonesia is one which is rich in Massa Aksi. Since the awakening of nationalism, mass mobilization has been the main trait. Contrary to what the Soeharto regime tried to portray, the Indonesian national liberation struggle was not one fought solely on the military plane. It was one fought on the political plane with mass mobilization. Even when it was fought on the military plane, the army took the form of a people’s militia whose control was under that of the mass organizations.

Until 1965, all layers of Indonesian society were politically mobilized. Politics penetrated all aspects of life. There was a situation of pitched class struggle at that time. The 1960s was a period of revolution (and counter-revolution) throughout the world. The G30S incident spelt a complete reversal of this and Indonesia was never to be same anymore.

The 1965 counter-revolution

What happened to the Indonesian Communist Party? This is the burning question that still plagues the minds of Indonesian revolutionaries. It is therefore fitting for us to visit this question before we go on to address the 1998 Reformasi and later the prospect for the coming revolution in Indonesia.

Prior to its annihilation, the Indonesian Communist Party claimed 3 million members. The PKI also had many affiliated and sympathizing mass organizations: Pemuda Rakyat (People’s Youth) with 1.5 million members, SOBSI (Indonesian Centre of Workers’ Organizations) with 3.8 million members (out of a total of 7 million organized workers), the BTI (Peasants Front of Indonesia) with 5 million members, and Gerwani (Indonesian Women’s Movement) with 750,000 members.1 This made the PKI the third largest communist party in the world after that of the Soviet Union and China. In one stroke, and without any significant resistance, the PKI – and with it the whole workers’ and peasants’ movement – was decimated by the reactionary generals under the guidance of the “democratic” imperialist forces. What followed was a 32-year period of reaction. There is no defeat more demoralizing than one without a fight.

The savagery of the ruling class is not something that we should be surprised at. Since the first attempt of the proletarian revolution, i.e. the Paris Commune in 1871, the ruling class has been brutal in their counterattacks. To put it into perspective, the failure of the Paris Commune resulted in the massacre of around 80,000 people in a town of 1.8 million people. Indonesia’s population was 90 million at the time of the 1965-66 massacre. The reasons for the failure of the Indonesian revolution lie deeper than in the mere savagery or trickery of the ruling class. That factor is a given. The important factor for us lies in the incorrect political line of the PKI.

The PKI was the mass workers’ party of Indonesia. However, it had the misfortune of being developed under the guidance of the Russian and Chinese Stalinists after the 1926-27 failed putsch. When the party was officially re-established again in 1945, like many other communist parties it had become the tool of Moscow’s foreign policy and took an incorrect policy that brought about the demise of the working class movement. It is important here to separate the genuine desire of these leaders (Aidit, Njoto, Lukman, Sudisman) to liberate the workers and peasants from their obvious political errors, or else we would not be able to move forward.

By the late 1930s, the Communist Party of Soviet Union was no longer the same party that had led the October Revolution. It had become the tool of the Soviet bureaucracy to maintain its privileges. It was no longer in their interests to fight for world socialism despite the rhetoric of the party. It sought to peacefully co-exist with capitalism and thus became an active brake on the socialist struggle around the world. The Chinese Communist Party was built on the image of the CPSU; thus the Chinese state started off where the Russian Revolution ended, i.e. as a deformed workers’ state. These two states were a massive political influence in the working class movement throughout the whole period.

This historical fact determined the fate of many communist parties around the world. The leadership of the PKI was educated in the Stalinist “two-stage theory” (which was in fact a rehashing of Menshevik policy) which in essence says that in an undeveloped country like Indonesia the first stage of the revolution is of a bourgeois democratic character in order to abolish feudalism and imperialism. Thus, the task of the communists in such country is to ally with the progressive bourgeoisie, to subordinate class struggle to national struggle against feudalism and imperialism. Only after this a gateway will be opened for class struggle toward socialism.

From “Indonesian Society and the Indonesian Revolution (Basic Problems of the Indonesian Revolution)”2, which was a political perspective of the PKI written by D. N. Aidit, “a manual for use in the Party Schools at the centre and in the provinces and approved by the CC Plenum, July 1957”, we will examine closely the “two-stage theory” of the PKI and the many contradictions of its theory and policy.

The documents started with the appraisal of current Indonesian society, which it claimed to be semi-feudal and semi-colonial. From here it flows that the “main enemy of the Indonesia revolution at the present stage is… imperialism and feudalism.”3 This is the first error. Fundamentally, Indonesian society has long been a capitalist society. Its mode of production is dominated by the capitalist mode of production, which is private ownership of the means of production. The Indonesian economy has been tied to capitalism since its first contact with the Dutch colonial power more than 400 years ago (see Appendix “The History of Capitalist Development in Indonesia”). It is semi-feudal only in the sense that the national bourgeoisie – like any other national bourgeoisie in undeveloped countries – was never able to carry out its historical task of agrarian reform, not then and not even now. It was semi-colonial only in the sense that within the context of global capitalism and the uneven development of capitalism, like many other smaller capitalist countries, it becomes a prey of bigger capitalist countries.

From this fundamental error flows the idea that the task of Indonesian revolution is to create “a people’s government” and that “this government (the People’s Democratic Government) is not a government of the dictatorship of the proletariat but a government of the dictatorship of the people.”4 (page 57).

Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, fought valiantly against the concept of the “people’s state”. Lenin in his State and Revolution explained this clearly:

“The ‘free people’s state’ was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies [1870]. This catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to ‘justify’ its use ‘for a time’ from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. (…) Furthermore, every state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not ‘free’ and not a ‘people’s state’. Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.” (Lenin, State and Revolution) [Emphasis added]

Soekarno’s government was not a military dictatorship. Under his government, the communists were given free reign; they occupied cabinet and parliamentary posts. Engels was prepared to give some temporary justification for the usage of the agitational slogan “people’s state” in German in 1870s as they were living under a German Empire, an autocracy. But that was not the case in Indonesia under Soekarno. The slogan of the “people’s state” of the PKI was just another capitulation of the working class program to the national bourgeoisie.

In order to justify its two-stage policy, a progressive national bourgeoisie had to be created. Thus, the PKI twisted and turned to redefine the nature of the bourgeois class in Indonesia:

“The bourgeois class is composed of compradors and the national bourgeoisie. The big bourgeoisie that is comprador in character directly serves the interests of the big foreign capitalists and is thus fattened up by them (…) However, the national bourgeoisie displays two features. As a class that is also suppressed by imperialism and the whole development is also stifled by feudalism, this class is anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, and in this respect it is one of the revolutionary forces. (…) The Indonesian national bourgeoisie, because it too is oppressed by foreign imperialism can, in certain circumstances, and within certain limits, take part in the struggle against imperialism. In such specific circumstances, the Indonesian proletariat must build unity with the national bourgeoisie and preserve this unity with all its strength.”5 [Emphasis added]

So, there is a good bourgeoisie and there is a bad bourgeoisie. This thesis runs contrary to the Marxist class analysis. It is true that at any given time there can be splits amongst the ruling class as one section might have different secondary economic or political interests than the other sections. However, the primary interest of the whole bourgeoisie remains the same: the subjugation of the working class. The whole existence of this class is based on its rule over the proletariat.

The Indonesian national bourgeoisie was born late in history. Since the beginning, its existence was tied to imperialism. Even worse, unlike the national bourgeoisies of other developing countries (India and China for example) who played a more active and dominant role in the nationalist movement   although in the end they too were incapable of completing the national liberation movement   the Indonesian native bourgeoisie never led the nationalist movement.

With their incorrect appraisal of the national bourgeoisie, the PKI then actively sought an alliance with the “progressive bourgeoisie” by subordinating class struggle to national struggle, subordinating the working class to the national bourgeoisie despite their lip service to the fact that “the Indonesian revolution will not succeed unless it is under the leadership of the Indonesian proletariat.”6 History has not been kind on those who have been trying to find a progressive national bourgeoisie as one has yet to be found. Where was the progressive bourgeoisie when the PKI was crushed and millions of their supporters persecuted? Where was the progressive bourgeoisie during the military dictatorship of Soeharto?

The inconsistencies of PKI theory on the nature of the national bourgeoisie become even more vulgar:

“In facing the wavering characteristics of the Indonesian national bourgeoisie, attention should be paid to the fact that it is precisely because it is politically and economically weak that it is not very difficult to pull this class to the left, to make it stand firmly on the side of the revolution, so long as the progressive forces are large and the tactics of the Communist Party are correct. This means that the wavering element of this class is not fatal, it is not insurmountable. But on the other hand, if the progressive forces are not large and the tactics of the Communist Party not correct, then this economically weak and politically weak national bourgeoisie can easily run to the right and become hostile to the revolution.”7 [Emphasis added]

If the national bourgeoisie is already “politically and economically weak”, all the more reason to cast it aside. It is because they are weak that they are not to be made allies. In a war, allying yourself with a weak ally is never advisable because instead of strengthening your force you will find your force compromised.

Sadly enough, we are seeing the same argument now being used by the PRD/PAPERNAS to justify their turn towards an alliance with the national bourgeoisie. History repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce.

Let us look at how Lenin approached the question of alliances with other social classes and groups. During the era of the Tsar, one of the immediate tasks of the Russian proletariat was to fight against the autocracy of the Tsar. In The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats written by Lenin in 1897 while in Siberia, he wrote:

“In the democratic, political struggle, however, the Russian working class does not stand alone; at its side are all the political opposition elements, strata and classes, since they are hostile to absolutism and are fighting it in one form or another. Here side by side with the proletariat stand the opposition elements of the bourgeoisie, or of the educated classes, or of the petty bourgeoisie, or of the nationalities, religions and sects, etc., etc., persecuted by the autocratic government. The question naturally arises of what the attitude of the working class towards these elements should be. Further, should it not combine with them in the common struggle against the autocracy? … should they not, therefore, combine with all the elements in the political opposition to fight the autocracy, setting socialism aside for the time being? Is not this essential in order to strengthen the fight against the autocracy?

“Let us examine these two questions.

“The attitude of the working class, as a fighter against the autocracy, towards all the other social classes and groups in the political opposition is very precisely determined by the basic principles of Social-Democracy expounded in the famous Communist Manifesto. The Social-Democrats support the progressive social classes against the reactionary classes … This support does not presuppose, nor does it call for, any compromise with non-Social-Democratic programmes and principles—it is support given to an ally against a particular enemy. Moreover, the Social-Democrats render this support in order to expedite the fall of the common enemy, but expect nothing for themselves from these temporary allies, and concede nothing to them.

“… This brings us to the second question. While pointing to the solidarity of one or other of the various opposition groups with the workers, the Social-Democrats will always single out the workers from the rest, they will always point out that this solidarity is temporary and conditional, they will always emphasise the independent class identity of the proletariat, who tomorrow may find themselves in opposition to their allies of today. We shall be told that “such action will weaken all the fighters for political liberty at the present time.” We shall reply that such action will strengthen all the fighters for political liberty. Only those fighters are strong who rely on the consciously recognised real interests of certain classes, and any attempt to obscure these class interests, which already play a predominant role in contemporary society, will only weaken the fighters. That is the first point. The second point is that, in the fight against the autocracy, the working class must single itself out, for it is the only thoroughly consistent and unreserved enemy of the autocracy, only between the working class and the autocracy is no compromise possible, only in the working class can democracy find a champion who makes no reservations, is not irresolute and does not look back. The hostility of all other classes, groups and strata of the population towards the autocracy is not unqualified; their democracy always looks back.

“The proletariat alone can be—and because of its class position must be—a consistently democratic, determined enemy of absolutism, incapable of making any concessions or compromises. The proletariat alone can be the vanguard fighter for political liberty and for democratic institutions. Firstly, this is because political tyranny bears most heavily upon the proletariat whose position gives it no opportunity to secure a modification of that tyranny—it has no access to the higher authorities, not even to the officials, and it has no influence on public opinion. Secondly, the proletariat alone is capable of bringing about the complete democratisation of the political and social system, since this would place the system in the hands of the workers. That is why the merging of the democratic activities of the working class with the democratic aspirations of other classes and groups would weaken the democratic movement, would weaken the political struggle, would make it less determined, less consistent, more likely to compromise. On the other hand, if the working class stands out as the vanguard fighter for democratic institutions, this will strength the democratic movement, will strengthen the struggle for political liberty, because the working class will spur on all the other democratic and political opposition elements, will push the liberals towards the political radicals, will push the radicals towards an irrevocable rupture with the whole of the political and social structure of present society.”

We apologize if we have to quote lengthily from Lenin, but we wish to avoid the practice of selective fragmentary quoting that many so-called Leninists like to do.

So it is clear how the Bolsheviks approached other social classes in the fight against absolutism: recognizing that the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie might have the same interests for specific goals, but at the same time openly criticizing the limitations of the bourgeoisie in their fight, and warning against merging democratic activities with them. In essence, the proletariat has to uphold its class independence and not cast aside its socialist goal.

This was written in 1897, before the fateful 1905 Revolution that brought the first blow to the autocracy and revealed even more the bankruptcy of the national bourgeoisie. Here is what Lenin wrote in 1906 in “The Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat” after the betrayal and cowardice of the national bourgeoisie in their fight against the autocracy:

“… the bourgeoisie as a whole is incapable of waging a determined struggle against the autocracy; it fears to lose in this struggle its property which binds it to the existing order; it fears an all-too revolutionary action of the workers, who will not stop at the democratic revolution but will aspire to the socialist revolution; it fears a complete break with officialdom, with the bureaucracy, whose interests are bound up by a thousand ties with the interests of the propertied classes. For this reason the bourgeois struggle for liberty is notoriously timorous, inconsistent, and half-hearted.”

The PKI, despite its claim of being Leninist, seems to have not read carefully Lenin’s writings. The workers and peasants of Indonesia had to pay dearly for the mistaken policy of the PKI: 32 years of military dictatorship that robbed the whole generation of its class fighters and tradition of class struggle.

The fall of Soeharto

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the bourgeoisie of the whole world were celebrating. They sharpened their teeth even more with their ideological assault. “Capitalism has triumphed,” so they claimed.

Indonesia was set as an example of how a country could prosper if they embraced capitalism. However, beneath the “Indonesian miracle” was the beginning of the movement that would eventually rock the whole region. Early 1990 saw the formation of the nucleus of youth who would later lead the struggle against Soeharto. These students were grouped around the PRD, the only organized Left force at that moment, working clandestinely under the threat of kidnapping and disappearance.

Early 1990 also saw the emergence of mass movements. The number of peasant protests was increasing. The number of recorded workers’ strikes rose in the 1990s, from 61 in 1990 to 300 in 1994 and even more went unrecorded. This is because the economic miracle of Indonesia was built on exploiting the workers and peasants. Jobs were getting hard to find in the villages, and more and more peasants were forced into the cities where they either settled as urban workers or urban poor.

The bourgeoisie was overconfident with their victory in 1991. So confident were they that there would never be any more revolutions, that they resorted to an orgy of speculation without any limits. Seven years prior t the 1997 economic crisis, there was a huge influx of capital into the Indonesian private sector, from $314 million in 1989 to $11.5 billion in 1996, an increase of 3500%. This massive private capital, mostly in speculative short term investment in the real estate sector, spurred economic growth reaching almost 10% a year. The bubble economy had to burst sooner or later because at the end of the day all the skyscrapers and apartments being built had no buyers. This was a classic crisis of overproduction.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis was a disaster, not just economically but also politically for the ruling class. Just 8 years before they had been talking about the “end of history”, that there would be no more bust in the capitalist economy and no more revolution. Here in Indonesia, the country touted as the example of the superiority of capitalism, the system crumbled. And the “floating masses” disintegrated under the pressure.

From being hailed as the “father of development”, within months Soeharto became the symbol of everything that the masses hated. In a pre-revolutionary situation, one of the characteristics that we always see is a split in the ruling class: between one section that seeks to reform the system from above in order to prevent revolution from below and another section that fears that any kind of reform will embolden the masses further.

The radicalization of the masses in the last 9 years had made Soeharto’s position so untenable that even his most trusted man, Harmoko, the Speaker of the Parliament, urged him to step down. The capitalists, domestic and foreign, started abandoning him by suddenly shedding crocodile tears about the repression of democracy under his regime. A compromise was eventually struck: Soeharto was to resign but no trial should ever be held, and the reformists would take the helm of the movement, making sure that it went through a safe channel.

The Left, practically the PRD being the only organized force, was not ready to take power. There were many factors at play, each one reinforcing the other. The 32-year period of reaction under Soeharto was definitely the main factor. The extent to which the workers’ movement was defeated and decimated for a whole generation was so significant that it still weighed heavily on the consciousness of the masses and its leadership. Making matters worse was also the incorrect perspective on the part of the PRD, which was to rely on the progressive bourgeoisie, i.e. the reformist leaders.

The aftermath

The Reformasi movement did not change anything fundamental in Indonesia. When it seemed that power was in the hands of the people, with millions of people on the streets and occupying the parliament building, the power was handed back to the ruling class. What actually happened?

The reformists played exactly their historical role: saving capitalism in its moment of crisis. Therefore, their betrayal is a given factor; it is inevitable. Thus, any attempt to blame the failure of the Reformasi 1998 on these reformists does not lead us one step further. The accusation of “false reformist” (reformis gadungan) which has become a catch word amongst the Left, particularly after the failure of the 1998 movement, shows the inability to comprehend the nature of bourgeois reformers. These so-called “false reformists” are actually true reformists.

The immediate task of the 1998 Reformasi was the overthrow of the military dictatorship of Soeharto. We recognize that parliamentary democracy is a better field for the working class to fight in. However, it is one thing to recognize the need for a parliamentary democracy in place of military dictatorship; it is another thing to expect that parliamentary democracy can be realized by the bourgeois reformers. Only the workers, in alliance with the peasants and urban poor, can be relied on to carry out the democratic tasks to their completion. We expect nothing from the bourgeoisie. The PRD’s reliance on the progressive national bourgeoisie created confusion amongst the rank-and-file of PRD and its periphery. When all the bourgeois reformers betrayed the movement, the resulting ideological confusion created demoralization within the movement for the next 3-5 years. The only answer provided is that these reformists were “false reformists”; thus the campaign to seek true reformists began anew.

Could the Left, as it was at the time, have then taken power and brought about the establishment of socialism in 1998? With the benefit of hindsight, considering all the factors, we can say that the answer to that question is negative. In order to take power, the workers needed a party which was ready to take power. The 1965 defeat robbed the working class of this chance. The PRD, the only party at that time, was too young and it lacked the necessary leadership to be able to tackle the question of power.

However, if the PRD had had a correct programme it could have emerged stronger from the failure of the Reformasi movement. With correct tactics, the PRD could have retreated in an orderly fashion and not be splintered into many factions that opened up a period of demoralization afterwards. A good army is one that can retreat in an orderly fashion to prepare for a new stronger assault.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t support reforms. We support reforms as much as they still have a vital forcefulness, as much as they still attack the base of the ruling regime. For example, when Gus Dur was talking about abolishing the anti-communist law, the attitude of revolutionaries should have been one of support for this demand but not one of supporting the Gus Dur government. We agitate widely for this demand on our own terms, which is that only a workers’ government can completely fulfil this demand, that we can only trust the workers to fulfil this demand. We expected nothing from the bourgeois liberal government of Gus Dur. We support reforms always with a perspective of workers conquering power. Only through this can we prepare the working class for their historical task. With such a class independent policy, the rank and file of a revolutionary party will not be confused. If anything, they will gain more confidence and clarity for the upcoming task.

The eventual fate of the PRD was the only logical conclusion of their policy. With each passing year, the PRD drifted more and more towards a class collaborationist policy. Many of its cadres joined bourgeois parties. At first, in the eyes of those who are new to politics, the PRD’s rhetoric still sounded radical and revolutionary. However, beneath these revolutionary phrases one finds the idea of the “two-stages”, of supporting the so-called progressive national bourgeoisie.

The final turning-point for the PRD was their coalition with the PBR, a bourgeois party through and through, in the 2009 election. It was not even a coalition as the PRD weren’t allowed to put forward their own party name, flag, programme, etc. This electoral strategy was a complete failure. The PRD/PAPERNAS was silent about the result. So, when in their seventh congress earlier this year they changed their party’s principle from “People’s Social Democracy” (which is just another name for Marxism in the Indonesian context since the outright mentioning of Marxism is illegal) to Pancasila [the official philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state], it didn’t come as a big surprise. Unable to learn from their mistaken policy of class collaboration, there was only one way to go: return to the disastrous policy of the PKI.

Those within the PRD who deny that the PRD has held a class collaborationist policy only have to look at where the PRD is now. Many who denied this in the past finally realized it in the course of years, and they either split away (PDS, KPRM, and the PRP which was not a direct split from the PRD but a formation from the remnants of PRD cadres) or quit the party altogether and went their own separate way.

Out of the many splits and polemics of the past 10 years, the movement has gained ideological clarity. It has become clearer where everyone stands. This is a painful process that every movement has to go through. Those who make a hue and cry over the splits and pronounce them as tragic don’t understand the dialectics of the movement. Unity is needed on the Left, but not unprincipled unity that glosses over theory. The workers need to unite on a clean banner, not one filled with a hodgepodge of different ideas.

Militan (Indonesia)

[To be continued...]

1 Justus M. van der Kroef, The Communist Party of Indonesia: Its History, Program, and Tactics (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1965) 166-223.

2 D.N. Aidit, Indonesian Society and the Indonesian Revolution (Jakarta: Yayasan Pembaruan, 1958).

3 Aidit 49.

4 Aidit 64.

5 Aidit 57-58.

6 Aidit 62.

7 Aidit 58-59.

http://www.marxist.com/

Meski sudah lewat dua hari, tidak ada salahnya jika kita mengenang kembali Hari Anti Kemiskinan Sedunia yang jatuh pada tanggal 17 Oktober kemarin. Seperti diketahui, pada tanggal 17 Oktober tahun 1987, lebih dari seratus ribu orang berdemonstrasi di Trocadéro di Kota Paris, Perancis, tepat di tempat penandatanganan Deklarasi Universal Hak Asasi Manusia tahun 1948, untuk mengajak seluruh warga dunia merenungkan kembali nasib para korban kemiskinan ekstrim, kekerasan dan kelaparan di seluruh dunia. Kemudian, demi menghormati momen bersejarah tersebut, PBB berinisiatif untuk mengeluarkan resolusi no. 47/196 tertanggal 22 Desember 1992, yang menetapkan tanggal 17 Oktober sebagai Hari Anti Kemiskinan Sedunia (International Day of Eradication for Poverty)- yang diperingati oleh warga dunia hingga saat ini.

Berbicara tentang cara pemberantasan kemiskinan versi PBB, tentu tak bisa lepas juga dari pelaksanaan Tujuan Pembangunan Millenium/Millenium Development Goal’s disingkat MDG’s – yang juga merupakan produk PBB pada tahun 2000 demi menciptakan dunia tanpa kemiskinan pada tahun 2015. Sebagai bagian dari PBB, Indonesia sendiri ikut menerapkan program MDG’s sejak tahun 2004. Di dalam MDG’s sendiri, kita tahu, ada sekitar delapan program yang muluk-muluk di bidang kemiskinan, kesehatan, pendidikan, lingkungan, kesetaraan gender, dll.

Namun,terus terang, kami sangat meragukan keberhasilan program MDG’s di Indonesia. Karena praktis, kemiskinan -dan proses pemiskinan- tidak berkurang sama sekali. Kita masih mendengar terjadinya wabah kelaparan di berbagai tempat di tanah air, yang artinya masih terdapat kemiskinan ekstrim. Kesehatan rakyat juga semakin buruk saja. Angka kematian ibu dan bayi di Indonesia masih cukup tinggi, bahkan di antara negara-negara berkembang. Pendidikan semakin terbelakang dan tidak terjangkau. Perihal kesetaraan gender pun seperti masih mimpi, karena praktik penjualan anak dan perempuan masih marak di mana-mana. Target di bidang lingkungan hidup pun tidak terlihat karena setiap harinya kita terus disuguhkan fakta tentang dampak kerusakan lingkungan di sekitar kita, seperti banjir dan tanah longsor. Dan masih lagi fakta yang membuat kita ragu akan bukti keberhasilan MDG’s.

Bagi kami, bagaimana mungkin MDG’s dapat sukses jika Indonesia sendiri masih konsisten di jalur neoliberal. Mana mungkin ada anggaran yang cukup untuk membiayai pendidikan dan kesehatan, jika anggaran negara setiap tahun dihabiskan hanya untuk membayar utang luar negeri, sementara pendidikan dan kesehatan malah diserahkan pengelolaannya pada pasar. Mana mungkin kemiskinan dapat berkurang jika industri nasional sedang berhancuran akibat kesalahan kebijakan perdagangan pemerintah. Mana mungkin lingkungan hidup kita dapat selamat jika tidak ada penegakan hukum terhadap para pembalak liar. Semua ketidakmungkinan itu ditambah birokrasi program MDG’s yang berbelit-belit dan tidak transparannya penggunaan dana MDG’s membuatnya lebih terlihat seperti retorika kosong belaka.

PADA tahun 1972, sebagai mahasiswa sarjana yang sedang menulis skripsi, saya mengumpulkan materi di Bali. Topik skripsi saya berkaitan dengan sejarah politik Bali. Pada saat itulah, untuk kali pertama, saya mendengar langsung cerita saksi mata, bahkan pelaku pembantaian politik yang terjadi pada tahun 1965. Dia bercerita tentang orang-orang anti-komunis dari Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) yang masuk ke penjara di salah satu kabupaten dan menembak mati puluhan tahanan politik dengan menggunakan senapan mesin. Dia juga menyaksikan sendiri bagaimana seorang elemen anti-komunis memotong kepala aktivis-aktivis organisasi massa (ormas) Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) di desanya dengan menggunakan pedang.

Bagi siapa saja yang berusaha menyelidiki apa yang terjadi pada tahun 1965-1968, betapa pun sedikitnya, bisa dipastikan akan menemui ratusan, bahkan ribuan cerita tentang keganasan dan kebrutalan yang dilakukan oleh orang Indoensia terhadap bangsanya sendiri. Sekira 500 ribu orang tewas dalam tragedi itu, tapi ada juga estimasi bahwa yang tewas di atas dua juta orang. Belum lagi ratusan ribu yang ditahan tanpa proses – dan sering disiksa – pada kurun tahun 1965-1968. Paling sedikit ada 20 ribu anggota dan simpatisan PKI yang ditahan tanpa proses hukum sampai 1979, termasuk 15 ribu yang dibuang ke kamp konsentrasi di pulau Buru.

Proses pembantaian ini, saat ini sangat sering disebut sebagai “tragedi kemanusiaan 1965”. Tetapi pemakaian kata tragedi adalah sebuah penyelewengan sejarah dan seharusnya segera berhenti. Tragedi diambil dari bahasa Inggris “tragedy”, yang berarti sebuah peristiwa sedih dan malapetaka. Memang pembantaian ini adalah malapetaka buat Indonesia dan jelas juga sesuatu kejadian yang sedih. Tetapi sebuah tragedi terkesan seolah sebuah kecelakaan, seolah tak ada kesengajaan di dalamnya.

Dalam kasus pembantaian 1965, pembunuhan dan teror dijalankan sepenuhnya dengan sengaja. Harus dicatat,dari 500 ribu orang lebih yang tewas, hanya tujuh di antaranya yang dikategorikan anti-komunis, yaitu para perwira yang mati dalam aksi keblinger yang dilakukan oleh kelompok Gerakan 30 September. Dari tujuh orang itu, tiga meninggal ditembak di rumah (juga termasuk anak perempuan Jenderal Nasution) dan lainnya dieksekusi di luar proses hukum.

Sementara itu pembantaian terhadap pendukung Sukarno yang terjadi kemudian pun bukan bagian dari sebuah konflik atau perang saudara. Tidak ada niat atau kemampuan dari pihak pro-Sukarno dan pro-PKI untuk melawan balik. Pembantaian yang terjadi adalah pembantaian terencana yang dilakukan oleh militer di bawah pimpinan Suharto, bersama-sama beberapa milisi partai anti-Sukarno dan anti-PKI yang dilatih dan dipersenjati oleh militer.

Menyebut peristiwa pembantaian 1965 sebagai tragedi, sama artinya dengan menutupi kenyataan sejarah. Sebuah tragedi adalah sesuatu yang harus ditangisi dan disesali. Tetapi pembantaian 1965 bukan hanya sesuatu malapetaka yang meyedihkan, melainkan juga sebuah tindakan kriminal yang harus ditindaklanjuti dengan proses hukum yang berlaku. Karena yang terjadi saat itu bukan sebuah kecelakaan alam yang jatuh dari langit, tetapi suatu kesengajaan oleh pihak kekuasaan yang dilangsungkan secara sistematik selama hampir dua tahun berturut-turut.

Sebaiknya kita semua berhenti menggunakan istilah “tragedi”, lantas menggantinya dengan istilah “malapetaka anti-kemanusiaan”. Tentu saja penggantian istilah juga tidak cukup. Kalau memang terjadi pembunuhan sengaja yang sistematik terhadap orang tak bersalah dan tak bisa membela diri, mestinya harus ada keadilan yang ditegakkan.

Istilah “tragedi” juga menciptakan kesan seolah-olah apa yang terjadi pada tahun 1965 juga tanpa sebab, tanpa asal-usul. Kesan ini juga harus dihilangkan. Karena selama kesan itu ada, generasi manusia Indonesia sekarang ini – kaum muda khususnya – tak akan terangsang untuk bertanya: Kenapa? Bagaimana bisa itu terjadi?

Kata “tragedi” juga menyebabkan sumirnya pengertian bahwa apa yang terjadi mulai Oktober 1965, adalah bagian dari sebuah sejarah pertarungan yang sudah berlangsung sejak tahun 1920-an. Pertarungan itu terjadi pada soal akan kemana Indonesia dibawa setelah kemerdekaan pada 17 Agustus 1945? Pertarungan itu semakin menajam pada tahun 1960-an. Dua kubu tumbuh berkembang sama kuatnya saat itu: kubu pertama, dipimpin secara ideologis oleh Sukarno yang menginginkan sosialisme ala Indonesia, sementara kubu lain dipimpin oleh elemen militer yang menginginkan Indonesia berkiblat ke kapitalisme.

Untuk bisa memahami pertarungan tersebut, tidak cukup berhenti dengan rumusan konflik yang sederhana. Kita harus lebih dalam meneliti apa yang dimaksud oleh dua faham itu. Apa yang sebenarnya diperjuangkan oleh kubu sosialis Sukarno? Apa programnya pada waktu itu? Hal itu merupakan sebuah studi kolektif yang perlu diadakan bersama oleh seluruh masyarakat Indonesia secara terbuka, bebas sensor dan bebas dari beban adanya sebuah “sejarah resmi” Indonesia. Dalam suasana bebas, semua ini harus digali bersama.

Beberapa hal telah diketahui bahwa sebelum 1965, kubu pro-Sukarno mencoba lakukan reformasi agraria; juga kita tahu bahwa pendidikan diusahakan gratis. Kita tahu bahwa keterlibatan rakyat kecil di dalam kegiatan politik sangat meningkat melalui gerakan-gerakan ormas-ormas besar kiri. Tetapi itu semua harus lebih diperdalam untuk mengetahui mutu dan keterbatasannya. Juga harus dipelajari ini semua mau dibawa kemana, mengingat bahwa PKI dan kiri di Indonesia sebelum 1965, belum mempunyai kedudukan di pemerintahan yang signifikan.

Mengingat juga bahwa semua ini berkembang di zaman Perang Dingin dan zaman di mana Stalinisme, baik yang berkiblat ke Moskwa maupun yang ke Beijing, sangat kuat dan di mana populisme pasca-kemerdekaan juga sangat kuat di berbagai negeri. Kontradiksi-kontradiksi di dalam politik kubu pro-Sukarnosime dan pro-PKI juga bisa ditemukan dengan mudah. Antara lain, misalnya, prinsip pemilihan perwakilan elektoral dikorbankan oleh Sukarno dengan tak ada pemilu antara tahun 1957 dan 1965. Perdebatan dan diskusi internal di tubuh organisasi PKI juga sangat tertutup.

Tanpa pengetahuan dan pengertian tentang semua sejarah ini, persitiwa 1965 tetap akan merupakan sebuah “tragedy” yang akan ditangisi – dan itupun hanya oleh sebagian orang yang masih dibuat bingung oleh selubung misteri peristiwa itu sendiri. Seharusnya, selain urusan menagih pertanggungjawaban atas perbuatan kriminal pembunuhan massal itu, bangsa Indonesia juga harus mampu mengambil pelajaran dari pengalaman itu demi kemajuan bangsa. Dan itu menjadi hal mustahil tanpa adanya suasana bebas untuk mempelajari sekaligus memperdebatkan kembali secara terbuka dan bersama-sama tentang peristiwa 1965-1968. Suasana yang bebas yang disertai rasa aman untuk kembali mengkaji malapetaka itu mutlak diperlukan.***

*Sumber: http://indoprogress.blogspot.com

Perkembangan diskusi mengenai skema REDD bertambah kepada model REDD plus. Konsep ini memungkinkan membawa “perkebunan” masuk kedalam skema pengurangan emisi. Hal ini akan memperburuk kondisi kehutanan di Indonesia yang selama ini terus menerus dihimpit oleh perluasan perkebunan. Dengan masuknya perkebunan kedalam skema REDD, maka tujuan untuk menahan deforestasi mejadi tidak terjawab melalui penerapan REDD.

Beranjak dari perjalanan skema persiapan atau semacam REDD di Indonesia yang telah di coba untuk dipraktekan, dapat dikutip beberapa pelajaran penting yang menunjukkan fakta penerapan REDD ditataran realita. Hasil diskusi public yang dilakukan oleh Forum Masyarakat Sipil Indonesia untuk Keadilan Iklim (Indonesian Civil Society Forum For Climate Justice) di tiga daerah (Aceh, Jambi, dan Kalimantan tengah) menunjukkan beberapa kekhawatiran masyarakat terhadap rencana implementasi REDD di Indonesia. Kekhawatiran tersebut khususnya terkait akses masyarakat terhadap informasi, ruang masyarkat dalam pengambilan kebijakan, potensi konflik akibat tidak adanya akuntabilitas financial atas REDD dan kepastian penglolaan kawasan.

Berbagai kekhawatiran tersebut perlu mendapat pertimbangan dari para pengambil kebijakan, baik di level nasional maupun daerah. Hal tersebut bukanlah tidak beralasan jika dikaitkan dengan banyaknya tunggakan masalah kehutanan di Indonesia, mulai dari tata kelola hingga persoalan permintaan dan pemenuhan (supply and demand) akan kebutuhan kayu. Penyelesaian terhadap permasalahan tersebut sepatutnya menjadi prioritas penanganan secara konprehensif. Termasuk melihat hutan di Indonesia, yang tidak hanya dipandang sebatas pada nilai karbon semata.

Sejarah Singkat REDD

Banyak pihak percaya bahwa praktek penghancuran hutan tropis memberikan kontribusi yang cukup signifikan dalam hal pelepasan emisi global. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) memperkirakan emisi dari deforestasi hutan tropis pada tahun 1990-an sekitar 1,6 milyar ton karbon setiap tahunnya. Hal ini setara dengan 20% dari total emisi karbon keseluruhan, yang mengakibatkan perubahan lapisan tanah, dan penyumbang terbesar kedua penyebab pemanasan global.

Deforestasi dan degradasi hutan tentu tidak terjadi begitu saja, melainkan disebabkan oleh beberpa factor, baik yang bersifat dominant maupun yang bersifat sekunder. Sebagai contoh di Amerika Selatan, pendorong laju deforestasi adalah perusahan pertanian skala besar untuk memproduksi daging saoi dan keledai bagi pasar ekspor. Sedangkan di Asia Tenggara, pendorongnya adalah hutan tanaman, perkebunan kelapa sawit dan kopi. Permintaan kayu dunia juga mendorong deforestsi hutan sehingga menyumbang emisi sebagai akibat perubahan pemanfaatan lahan.

Disisi lain, hutan bukan hanya berfungsi sebagai penyerap, penyimpan dan pelepas karbon. Hutan juga menyediakan jasa ekologi penting seperti perlindungan daerah tangkapan air, pengaturan aliran air, mendaur ulang nutrisi, pengendali iklim local, pengaturan curah hujan, pengendalian penyakit, serta sebagai sumber sandang dan papan bagi masyarakat disekitar hutan.

Factor deforestasi hutan sebagai penyumbang emisi inilah yang kemudian memunculkan ide untuk melahirkan gagasan pengurangan emisi akibat deforestasi dan degradasi hutan, yang kemudian dikenal dengan istilah REDD (Reducing Emission From Deforestation and Degraadation). Secara sederhana REDD dapat diartikan sebagai pemberian insentif atau konmpensasi financial kepada Negara-negara yang berkeinginan dan mampu mengurangi emisi dari deforestasi. Ia muncul sebagai alternative baru dalam kerangka negosiasi mitigasi perubahan iklim, dan sekaligus menjawab persoalan dari deforestasi.

Ide tersebut mulai diperbincangkan oleh Negara pemilik hutan sejak pertemuan COP 11 di Montreal, Kanada, di bulan Desember 2005. Papua Nugini dan Costa Rica, didukung oleh delapan Negara lainnya (Coalition for Rainforest Nations) mengajukan proposal mekanisme penurunan emisi dari deforestasi di Negara-negara berkembang. Usulan tersebut mendapat dukungan resmi para pihak (paries) pada saat COP-13 di Bali, yang termaktub dalam Rencana Aksi Bali (The Bali Action Plan), menyatakan bahwa pendekatan komprehensif mengurangi dampak perubahan iklim harus mencakup “Pendekatan kebijakan insentif positif tentang isu yang terkait dengan pengurangan emisi dari deforestasi dan degradai hutan di Negara-negara berkembang”.

Selanjutnya, yang menjadi perhatian banyak pihak adalah pembahasan untuk memasukkan REDD dalam kerangka kerja pasca 2012. Tentu saja keputusan tentang mekanisme REDD diperlukan dan harus disetujui oleh para pihak. Akan tetapi pada COP 15, Kpenhagen-Denmark, Desember 2009, dunia masih harus menunggu lebih lama untuk melihat “wujud” REDD yang sebenarnya. COP 15 tidak menghasilkan suatu keputusan yang berarti mengenai masuknya REDD sebagai kerangka kerja pasca 2012. sehingga, semua pihak harus bersabar sampai dengan pertemuan COP 16 yang akan datang.

Perdebatan REDD dan REDD plus.

Masuknya REDD sebagai salah satu langkah mitigasi perubahan iklim bukan tanpa perdebatan. Pro dan kontra terus muncul, bahkan hingga saa ini paska pertemuan kopenhagen. Mengingat REDD merupakan skema yang berkaitan dengan sector kehutanan dan berbasis hak, maka perdebatan yang belum tuntas hingga hari ini terkait definisi hutan menurut FAO yang digunakan oleh UNFCCC.

Menurut FAO, hutan dapat diklasifikasikan sebagai wilayah dengan penutupan vegetasi pohon lebih dari sepuluh persen. Sehingga perkebunan monokultur skala besar seperti perkebunan kelapa sawit dan Hutan Tanaman Industri (HTI) bisa diklasifikasikan sebagai hutan. Padahal kenyataannya, kedua jenis perkebunan tersebutlah yang menghancurkan keberadaan hutan alam tersisa di Indonesia, bahkan Asia tenggara. Lebih ironis lagi jika keduanya juga mendapat insentif dari skema REDD.

Penting juga menempatkan perdebatan REDD di konteks global dan memasukan akar masalah penyebab deforestasi di Negara berkembang. Persoalan deforestasi disini tidak dapat dipisahkan dari dampak perdagangan internasional dan pola konsumsi di Negara Utara. Tanpa menangani permintaan industri terhadap bahan baku murah dari Negara Selatan seperti kayu, bubur kertas, crude palm oil (CPO), dan bahan tambang, maka REDD hanya menjadi konsep handal diatas kertas, sangat sulit mencaapai tujuan jika dipaksakan untuk dilaksanakan.

Disamping perdebatan di atas, yang patut dipertanyakan dan harus segera dipecahkan pada tataran ideology adalah mengenai kemungkinan pemanfaatan konsep REDD oleh Negara industri untuk lari dari tanggung jawab menurunkan emisi di Negara mereka sendiri atau dikenal dengan istilah carbon offset. REDD juga beresiko makin meminggirkan masyarakat adat dan masyarakat yang bergantung pada hutan. Ada kekhawatiran, “perubahan iklim yang merupakan permasalahan social dan lingkungan dijadikan usaha bisnis yang memberikan peluang untuk menguasai lahan dalam jumlah besar dan murah”. Sehingga dalam negosiasi teks yang sedang berlangsung, penting bagi para pihak memastikan dimasukkannya kebijakan internasional tentang hak azasi manusia ( Deklarasi Universal HAM dan United Nations Declaration of The Rights of Indigenous Peoples) dan prinsip Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) kedalam setiap kebijakan atau kesepakatan terkait dengan REDD.

Belum usai perdebatan tentang REDD dengan segala kerumitan yang muncul, para pihak dipertemuan COP 14 di Poznan tahun 2008 lalu telah menyepakati sebuah consensus umum yang menekankan kegiatan REDD sebaiknya diperluas. Inilah mula lahirnya konsep REDD plus. Skema ini tidak berhubungan langsung dengan upaya pengurangan deforestasi dan degradasi lahan, tetapi difungsikan untuk melakukan konservasi cadangan karbon di hutan (conservation), pengelolaan hutan lestari (sustainable management of forest) dan peningkatan cadangan karbon hutan (enhancement of carbon stoks) melalui kegiatan penanaman pohon dan rehabilitasi lahan yang terdegradasi.

Asumsinya, skema REDD hanya akan memberikan keuntungan kepada Negara-negara pemilik hutan dengan laju deforestasi tinggi. Skema REDD plus dengan lingkup lebih luas, ditujukan agar Negara-negara yang selama ini aktif melakukan proses konservasi hutan juga bisa mendapatkan keuntungan. Ini termasuk perusahaan kayu dan perkebunan monokultur skala besar. Hal inilah yang kemudian memunculkan banyak dukungan terhadap skema REDD plus pada saat digagas.

Dilain sisi, implementasi REDD dapat menimbulkan implikasi serius bagi masyarakat adat/ local dan hutan alam itu sendiri. Selama ini makna konservasi yang terdengar bagus, dalam prakteknya telah melahirkan banyak masalah. Dalam penetapan kawasan taman nasional atau sejenisnya, terdapat banyak kasus pengusiran masyarakat adat/ local yang lebih dahulu tinggal di wilayah tersebut. Sehingga mereka kehilangan entitas adat dan ruang hidup. Demikian pula pengelolaan hutan lestari, yang prakteknya justru menjadi media pemberian subsidi dan pengakuan kepada perusahaan kayu (HPH ) untuk mengelola atau melakukan penebangan di kawasan hutan milik masyarakat adat/ local, yang pada akhirnya menimbulkan konflik agrarian yang berkepanjangan.

Jika demikian yang terjadi, upaya peningkatan cadangan karbon di hutan, hanya memberikan keuntungan ganda bagi perusahaan perkebunan skala besar. Mereka bisa menghabisi hutan, kemudian menanamnya kembali dengan tanaman sawit atau akasia, dan oleh karenanya mereka dapat diartikan telah melakukan upaya peningkatan cadangan karbon di wilayah bekas hutan tersebut.

Dinamika Kebijakan.

Di Indonesia, ada tiga kebijakan pemerintah saat ini yang langsung berhubungan dengan REDD, yakni: (1) Peraturan Menteri Kehutanan No. P.68/ Menhut-II/2008 tentang Penyelenggaraan Demonstration Activities Pengurangan Emisi Karbon dari Deforestasi dan Degradasi Hutan, (2) Peraturan Menteri Kehutanan No. 30/Menhut-II/2009 Tentang Tata Cara Pengurangan Emisi dari Deforestasi dan Degradasi Hutan, (3) Peraturan Menteri Kehutanan No. 36/Menhut-II/2009 Tentang Tata Cara Perizinan Usaha Pemanfaatan Penyerapan dan/atau Penyimpanan Karbon pada Hutan Produksi dan Hutan Lindung.

Dalam P.68/ Menhut-II/2008, Permenhut tidak mencantumkan hak masyarakat untuk mengetahui informasi mengenai demonstration activities dan menentukan sikap mereka atas aktivitas tersebut. Salah satu pasalnya hanya mengaakan bahwa ”berdasarkan hasil penilaian Kelompok Kerja Pengendalian Perubahan Iklim di Lingkungan Depertemen Kehutanan, Menteri dapat menyetujui, atau menyetujui dengan syarat, atau menolak permohonan pemrakarsa”. Pasal ini masih meneruskan pla pengambilan keputusan top-down oleh pemerintah. Dengan pola ini, masyarakat di lokasi proyek hanya ditempatkan sebagai obyek yang akan menerima sejumlah kompensasi tanpa mengetahui perhitungan dan pertimbangan-pertimbangan yang kompleks di balik kompensasi tersebut.

Gagasan serupa juga Nampak dalam P. 30/Menhut-II/2009. subtansi Permenhut ini tidak mempertimbangkan penguasaan masyarakat (adat/ local) atas tanah dan hutan di dalam dan sekitar lokasi proyek, tapi hanya memperhitungkan benefit sharing antara entitas nasional dan entitas internasional. Kategori entitas nasional semata-mata ditujukan kepada pihak yang sudah memiliki Surat Keputusan, Sertifikat maupun Surat Keterangan oleh Menteri Kehutanan atau Pemerintah Daerah mengenai penguasaan resmi yang diakui Negara atas obyek proyek. Misalnya, SK IUPHHK (Surat Keputusan Izin Usaha Pemanfaatan Hasil Hutan Kayu), SK Menteri tantang Penunjukan atau Penetapan Hutan Konservasi, SK Pembentukan Kesatuan Pemangku Hutan dan SK Menteri sebagai Pengelola Hutan adat hanya satu, sehingga mayoritas masyarakat adat tidak masuk dalam kategori entitas ini alias penonton di kampungnya sendiri.

Selanjutnya menurut peraturan ini, jika diperhitungkan dalam skema REDD, hak masyarakat adaat akan dimasukkan dalam kalkulasi manfaat ekonomi. Kalkulasi tersebut ditujukan bagi pengentasan kemiskinan yang harus tercantum dalam proyek para pelaku REDD. Dalam lampiran (1) mengenai pedoman pemberian rekomendasi oleh Pemerintah Daerah, Permenhut ini mencantumkan aspek pengentasan kemiskinan. Demikian halnya dengan lampiran (2) mengenai criteria pemilihan lokasi REDD, juga dicantumkan pertimbangan pengentasan kemiskinan.

Perhitungan benefit-sharing tidak sama dengan kualitas pengakuan hak atas sumber daya alam. Hak berhubungan dengan kategori kepemilikan yang umurnya tak terbatas, sementara sharing keuntungan bisa dalam kategori temporer yang sewaktu-waktu bisa dicabut. Karena itu, bagi sebagian besar masyaraka adat, pertama-tama yang mereka tegaskan adalah status sebagai pemilik hutan hak, bukan pengelola hutan yang harus bersusah payah mengurus SK ke Menteri Kehutanan. Disitu, posisi penguasaan mereka atas tanah dalam hutan menjadi aman dan dalam skema REDD status mereka adalah pihak yang memiliki hak.

Dalam P. 36/Menhut-II/2009, juga diatur mengenai masyarakat adat lewat skema hutan adaat. Ada dua masalah pokok terkait model distribusi yang di tetapkan Permenhut dalam peraturan ini dalam kaitannya dengan penguasaan masyarakat (adat/local). Pertama, jika memeriksa peta peruntukan kawasan hutan, hampir semuanya telah dikapling untuk peruntukan lain dan kepentingan pihak lain. Artinya, skema 70% benefit untuk masyarakat adat dari hutan adat tidak banyak gunanya di lapangan. Kedua, secara de facto, banyak kawasan IUPHHK-HA (Izin Usaha Pemanfaatan Hasil Hutan Kayu pada Hutan Alam) atau ijin lainnya berkonflik dengan klaim masyarakat. Dengan menggunakan logika legal formal maka pengusaha yang memiliki status legal yang jelas di mata hokum Negara yang akan mendapat manfaat. Karena itu, skema ini semakin memperlebar jurang ketidak adilan dan mengesahkan ketidakadilan penguasaan sumber daya yang sedang berlangsung, sekaligus memberikan manfaat berlipat ganda bagi yang memiliki akses lebih besar serta memangkas lebih banyak bagi yang aksesnya lebih kecil.

Secara umum, dalam kaitannya dengan tenure, dapat dikatakan bahwa ketiga peraturan ini masih merujuk keperaturan perundang-undangan yang ada, dimana pengakuan hak masyarakat local maupun adat atas tanah masih sangat minim. Ketiganya secara jelas menunjukkan bahwa konsep perencanaan, penerapan, hingga manfaat REDD, masyarakat (adat/local) menerima bagian dan peran terkecil daripada actor-aktor lainnya. Melalui paket peraturan tersebut, sebelum REDD diputuskan di forum internasional (UNFCCC), Indonesia telah mendahului pertemuan akbar tersebut dengan memberi keuntungan lebih besar justru kepada para pelaku perusakan hutan selama ini. Barangkali dalih di belakangnya adalah para pelaku logging akan mengembangkan pengelolaan hutan lestari atau sustainable forest management yang ironisnya telah berkali-kali gagal meski telah banyak digelontorkan uang donor untuk mendukung konsep ini.

Akankah kita menerapkan konsep-konsep yang riskan ini untuk memapankan ketidak adilan yang telah berlangsung? Atau kita masih punya kesempatan untuk menoleh dan melangkah mundur sebentar untuk mengatur gerak yang lebih baik bagi perlindungan hak masyarakat yang selama ini terlupakan dan memperbaiki masa depan hutan Indonesia.

Dinamika Proyek REDD.

Pentingnya menjag hutan menjadi sorotan utama, seiring dengan perhatian dunia internasional akan ancaman perubahan iklim yang meningkat. Secara global, deforestasi bertanggung jawab atas pelepasan emisi sebesar delapan giga ton CO₂ ke atmosfir hingga tahun 2000. Namun upaya mitigasi untuk menahan kenaikan temperature akan jauh dari keberhasilan apabila tingkat deforestasi tetap pada level ini.

Sebagai salah satu Negara terburuk dalam catatan deforestasi, Indonesia berhasil memecah rekor deforestasi rata-rata 2 juta hektar pertahun dalam dekad terakhir, dan menjadi emitter ketiga terbesar setelah China dan Amerika Serikat. Pada tahun 2007, perubahan alih fungsi lahan dan penggundulan hutan di Indonesia menyebabkan 2.56 juta ton emisi karbon, hamper 32% dari emisi global berasal dari sumber yang sama. Sehingga menjadi wajar ketika Indonesia menjadi perhatian ketika skema REDD dipertimbangkan untuk dimasukan dalam rezim pasca Protokol Kyoto 2012, dan Indonesia dengan antusias menangkap kesempatan untuk “mendaur ulang” dari skema perdagangan karbon.

Program Bank Dunia yang bernama Forest Carbon Partnership Facilities (FCPF) dan UN REDD adalah dua skema yang paling mengemuka untuk dikembangkan di Indonesia. Indonesia telah mengajukan proposalnya (Readiness Planning Proposal-RPP) kepada FCPF. Apabila disetujui, maka Indonesia akan menerima dana kurang lebih 3.6 juta dollar untuk pelaksanaan program kesiapan (readiness). Selain program tersebut, Indonesia juga telah menandatangani kolaborasi dengan UN REDD untuk mempersiapkan implementasi UN REDD dan sebagian besar didanai oleh pemerintah Norwegia.

Dari dua skema REDD yang utama, saat ini terdapat paling tidak 20 kegiatan yang terkait dengan REDD di Indonesia. Kegiatan tersebut terdapat di 4 pulau besar di Indonesia (Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi dan Papua). Para pelaksana proyek dan implementor termasuk pemerintah, NGO Internasional dan perusahaan. Kebanyakan dari kegiatan ini mengurusi restorasi ekosistem dan konservasi konvensional atau konservasi wilayah konsesi. Pada umumnya kegiatan masih berkutat pada tahap perencanaan dan persiapan, dan sebagian lagi sudah sampai pada tahap implementasi, seperti Proyek Ulu Masen di Ach, Hutan Harapan di Jambi dan Kalimantan Forest Carbon Partnership (KFCP) di Kalimantan Tengah.

Kegiatan-kegiatan tersebut akan menggunakan pasar karbon sukarela (Voluntary) dan bertindak sebagai aktivitas awal (demonstrations activities) atau kegiatan mempersiapkan implementasi dari skema REDD sesungguhnya ketika skema REDD diadopsi oleh UNFCCC.

Proses perencanaan dan pengembangan dari berbagai kegiatan tersebut cenderung tidak transparan dan mengarah kepada pendekatan business as usual seperti pemberian konsesi untuk penebangan (HPH) atau perkebunan (HTI dan sawit). Hal tersebut terjadi berbarengan dengan daftar panjang permasalahan kehutanan di Indonesia seperti tumpang tindih tata guna lahan, hak tenurial, ketidak jelasan dalam kebijakan dan korupsi, sehingga dikhawatirkan kegiatan ini akan gagal dalam pelaksanaan. Terdapat juga kekhawatiran bahwa kegiatan tersebut akan mengusir masyarakat sekitar dan didalam hutan.

Diantara kekhawatiran tersebut, ada yang telah menjadi kenyataan, seperti pada kasus PT. REKI di Hutan Harapan, Provinsi Jambi. Di wilayah ini, komunitas local telah terusir setelah PT. REKI mendapat hak atas areal tersebut pada tahun 2007. Salah satu warga dipenjara selama 6 bulan akibat mempertahankan lahan komunitasnya.

Semoga bermanfaat!!!..

Sumber pustaka:

1. Brief paper CSF-Indonesia: REDD, Pembelajaran dari Indonesia
2. IPCC. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. Geneva Switzerland: IPCC 2007
3. STERN, N. Stern Reviews: The economic of Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2006
4. UNFCC. Report of the Confrence of the Parties on its Thirteenth Session, Held in Bali from 3 to 15 December 2007. 3 to 15 December 2007, 2008
5. www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/6session_crp6.doc
6. http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/media/MediaGuide_REDD_Indonesian.pdf
7. http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/d/annex7f_land_use.pdf
8. Hougthon 2003, cited in Baumert et al. 2005, cited in Indonesia and Climate Change: Working paper on Current status & policies, A Sari et al, World Bank, Peace & DFID, March 2007
9. Pemanasan Global: Respon Pemerintah dan Dampaknya Terhadap Masyarakat Adat, Bernadinus Steni (HuMa, 2009)
10. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2009/06/01/harapan-rainforest-project-in-indonesia-exposes-cracks-in-un-climate-plans/_