Quarterly Report: February 2010

Until the fourth year of LoGA implementation or since 2006, there is still polemic arround LoGA that have triggered negative and positive impacts on Aceh governance. This is a consequence of the weaknesses of the unclear special authority for Aceh ruled out in LoGA. One of them is, first, it did not explicitly mentioned the term selfgovernment, either in MoU or LoGA, even though, it did implicitly highlighted the substance of LoGA resembles to the basic principle of self-government. Second, in legal policy perspective, the authority of Aceh local government on political and economic affairs still need to be firmly stated in the implementing legislation from the government and it can not be solved by simply producing local legislation or regulation/qanun. Third, government administrative policy and international agreements in Aceh which require consultation and approval from governor and Aceh provincial parliament has been altered into on the basis of consultation and consideration. For example, Article 8 point (3), related to govenment policy in district unfoldment must refer to governor consultations and considerations. Whereas in Article 5 Bill No 32/2004 declares that the administrative criteria should be from parliament, governor and Internal Affairs Minister. Four, it seems there is still repressive and excessive control from the central government on Aceh local legislation and local leadership regulation, as has been signaled in Article 235 for instance. And five, the dualism of legal reference in Aceh, where LoGA is still implemented on one hand, but on the other hand, LoGA should also refer to another general regulations or bills.