Otonomi Daerah dan Partisipasi Politik Lokal: Kasus Perda Bernuansa Sharî’a

Abstract

One of the main goals of autonomy program is to allow people to have a direct participation in local politics and government. This participation is expected to give opportunities to local potentials, uniqueness and cultures to emerge. In practice, people in one district, indeed, experience a more genuine political participation than during the New Order era, particularly in electing members of local parliament and a Head of District. They also have chances to control and protest government. However, this participation is vulnerable to manipulation by local political actors who has money, networks and positions. In some cases, in contrast to the goals to maximize local potentials, cultures and uniqueness, some local politicians use these local specialties to justify their group interests as people interests as a whole. These manipulation processes and participation phenomenon will be explained by using some case studies of shariah regulations. The regulations were made through limited people participation involving only elites’ circles in political parties, parliaments and bureaucracy, without involving other significant groups in society such as NGOs and some religious organizations. This elitist process creates problems in the legal formulations of the perda shariah, which cause some difficulties in their implementations. In addition to this, in some places, the shariah regulations have changed community social awaraness and relations by taking over some local social-religious customs and rules, which have been able to maintain harmonious social and religious relations in society for a long time.