Mupakat was the Achehnese practice of deliberative assembly, by which the chiefs, the village authorities, and the elders of the gampong transacted the public business of the community. The word itself derived from the Arabic muwāfaqah (“agreement”, “consent”), which the Achehnese had naturally mistaken for a verbal form derived from a root fakat, to which they gave the meaning of “plan, deliberation”. The Achehnese were, as Snouck Hurgronje observed, great lovers of mupakat in form at least if not in actuality. The most insignificant subjects gave rise to diffuse exchange of opinions; the more important chiefs were loath to deal with questions affecting their districts and their dependants except in the presence of some persons who as it were represented the latter. Did they neglect to “deliberate” with these delegates, they would quickly lose their influence.
The instrument by which an administrator ensured the carrying out of many a scheme, mupakat served both to terrorize weaker opponents and to flatter the stronger, until finally many were won over and even persuaded that they themselves were the originators of the proposed plan. As Habib Abdurrahman once told Snouck Hurgronje, the mupakat formed the strongest factor in the statecraft of an administrator among the Achehnese. It was thus at once a constitutional form and an instrument of rule: it gave the appearance of collective decision while leaving the substance of authority in the hands of the chief who knew how to manage the assembly.
It followed as a matter of course that in the gampong—that great household of father keuchi’ and mother teungku—the eldest sons at any rate, and such of the citizens as might be regarded as brothers of the two parents, had a voice in every discussion. In the orations which the Achehnese addressed either directly or by proxy to the authorities of his gampong, the prelude always ran thus: “Now, oh Teuku Keuchi’, Teungku, and ye who are elders of this gampong”. To these were also addressed the notices employed on some few occasions to announce certain events (such as a divorce for instance) to the whole gampong. These three components of the governing body of the gampong were deputed to make proposals of marriage; it was they that received the bridegroom in the name of the gampong, helped to decide questions as to the bringing up of orphans, and were present at all important bargains.
Among them also were to be found the speech-makers of the gampong. The speeches for particular occasions, though tedious, were sometimes not ungraceful, and were very full of interest from an ethnological point of view as a storehouse of old formulas. They were almost invariable in form, although there was no lack of local differences and individual embellishments. The keuchi’, or whoever might be acting as president of the assembly, did not always know these long formal orations by heart; and it was thought quite the correct thing for a chief to transfer the task of speech-making to another by a nod. In such cases the speaker was usually one of the pireueng tuha (village elders). The mupakat thus had its own literature of set forms—a native growth of Achehnese eloquence, by which the dignity of collective deliberation was maintained even when its substance had been pre-arranged.
It is worth noting that the Dutch administrator Mr. Der Kinderen, in his abortive ordinance for the regulation of native justice in Acheh, mistook the related word musapat (a derivative invented from mupakat) for the name of a native tribunal, and asserted the existence of such “musapats”. These, as Snouck Hurgronje drily observed, belonged to the realm of fancy.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.