The
decline of political Islam in
Indonesia By Andrew Steele
JAKARTA - Islam maintains a more visible
place in secular Indonesia than it has in years.
New mosques are popping up everywhere, while more
and more women wear jilbabs, or Islamic
headscarves, than before. That rising tide of
Islamic expression in daily life, however, is not
translating into greater support for the country's
many mushrooming Islamic political parties,
particularly the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, or the
PKS.
The PKS's impressive showing in the
2004 legislative election, in which the party
increased its representation in Indonesia's main
legislative body, the DPR, to 45 seats from the
seven seats it won in 1999, caught many political
pundits off guard. Questions arose
about whether
Indonesia's move toward more democracy would steer
the country in a less secular, more Islamic,
direction.
The party's "clean and caring"
campaign message struck a chord with many voters
who had already grown tired of the ineffectiveness
of Indonesia's better-known political parties,
including former president Suharto's old guard
Golkar, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri's
Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, or
PDI-P, and former president Abdurrahman Wahid's
National Awakening Party, or PKB.
However,
voters have always been suspicious that the PKS
would eventually push for sharia law and other
pieces of conservative legislation that would move
Indonesia in the direction of a more pro-Islamic
state. True to form, the PKS has recently thrown
its legislative weight behind an outrageous
anti-pornography bill which aims to push secular
Indonesia in the direction of the intolerant,
fundamentalist regimes seen in the Middle East.
Shifting its focus from corruption-busting
to promoting a more Islamic fundamentalist agenda
in Indonesia's secular society has affirmed fears
that the party was all along masquerading behind
anti-corruption issues to push forward their
hardline religious views.
Public opinion
polls, academics and former PKS supporters say the
party in its current manifestation is falling out
of favor with the more democratic-minded
Indonesian electorate. Widespread perceptions that
the party is consumed with internal disputes and
petty power struggles have greatly undermined the
party's credentials for affecting political,
economic and social change.
In fact, there
are growing indications that the party is losing,
rather than expanding, its popular support base. A
recent survey by the Jakarta-based Lembaga Survei
Indonesia (LSI), an independent polling agency,
points to a party in peril. LSI conducted a
year-long survey in 2005, asking Indonesians which
political party they would chose if legislative
elections were held that day.
The trend
line shows an unmistakable and steady decline for
the PKS, running from a January, 2005 high of
10.1% to a dismal 2.7% by year's end, the
second-lowest rating for any major political
party. The quantitative results are eye-opening,
particularly considering the still prevalent
impression among Jakarta's political pundits that
the PKS is actually growing in numbers.
Significantly, PKS campaigned in 2004 on
an anti-corruption ticket, hoping to attract
voters to its self-professed squeaky clean image.
Disenchanted by former strongman Suharto's corrupt
and abusive 32-year rule, that message resonated
soundly at the polls. Since being elected,
however, the PKS has not yet uncovered any major
corruption scandals, analysts note.
Although President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono's popularity has dropped in recent
months, the fact that no major corruption
allegations have surfaced against him or his
government has shifted popular attention toward
jump-starting the economy, spearheading education
drives and improving access to health care.
On all those fronts, the PKS doesn't bring
much to the legislative table, according to Indra
Piliang, a researcher at the Jakarta-based Center
for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS.
"What is the PKS's contribution?" He added that
the party was increasingly beginning to resemble
Indonesia's many other opportunistic political
parties.
Marriages of
convenience Indeed, the PKS has failed to
sustain or commit to any broad-based political
ideals, and increasingly party leaders seem bent
on mere survival. According to PKS's own internal
data, the party has entered at least 54 different
political coalitions supporting particular
governor, mayor or regent candidates across the
archipelago. Among them, analysts say, there is no
discernible common political or social thread
among the PKS's mishmash of coalitions.
On
Bali, for example, it backs the mayor of Denpasar
in a coalition consisting of Golkar, PAN, the
obscure PKPB and PKB party. In South Kalimantan,
PKS supports the regent of Balangan alongside PPP,
PDI-P, PD and the PKB. The PKS-backed Riau
Governor Ismet Abdullah, a Suharto-era New Order
holdover, causing some analysts and others to
question whether PKS's standards have completely
diminished.
"People are starting to see
PKS as just another party because they are
supporting anyone who might get into power," Indra
said. "Their affiliation with regional governments
and their participation in coalitions will make it
hard for them to maintain their clean and caring
message."
More significantly, the PKS's
once clean image has recently been tarnished by
corruption allegations surrounding its senior
members. In Depok, which lies just south of
Jakarta, PKS candidate Nurmahmudi Ismail recently
won a fiercely contested mayoral race, in which
the Indonesian Supreme Court finally ruled in
PKS's favor after rival Golkar challenged the
integrity of the results.
Nurmahmudi, who
campaigned on the party's anti-corruption message,
has been questioned since in two high-profile
graft cases. The most recent case involves a
suspect permit he issued for a 1 million hectare
palm oil plantation in East Kalimantan while he
served as forestry minister in 2000-01 under
then-president Abdurrahman Wahid. The inquiry into
the permit involves allegations that only 2,000
hectares are being used for palm oil, while the
remainder of the area was illegally logged.
On March 14, Indonesia's Corruption
Eradication Commission, or KPK, called the mayor
in for questioning. While he has not been charged
or declared a suspect, his political opponents are
demanding an explanation. Nurmahmudi has remained
silent on the case, while the PKS's head in Depok
said the questioning was a "normal process",
according to news reports.
Innocent or
guilty, the allegations have not been lost on
Depok residents who backed the PKS precisely for
their corruption-busting credentials. "The PKS has
started to play," said one PKS supporter,
signaling his perception that the PKS is no longer
a party of corruption fighters.
PKS has
been widely recognized as one of the
best-organized political parties in Indonesia. At
the same time, it also lacks strong candidates and
a well-developed political support base across the
country. "Their organizational structure is among
the best," Indra explained. "But to get mass
support they are not that good because they have a
very limited market - like Muslims in the cities
and college campuses."
Democratic
bellwether Political analysts are looking
forward to the Jakarta governor race, most likely
to be run in late 2007, as an important litmus
test measuring the popularity of PKS and other
Indonesian Islamic parties. For the PKS to be a
democratic force, analysts agree that it must
first get its house in order - and fast.
A
spiraling internal dispute between the party's
non-secular members, who control the spirit and
core of the party, and a smaller, more moderate
secular faction that joined after becoming
disenchanted with the corruption in other
political parties, threatens to derail its future
election hopes.
There are some indications
that party elders understand the political
necessity to tone down its increasingly hardline
message. Information recently surfaced that the
party is considering fronting former Indonesian TV
star Rano Karno as its candidate in the Jakarta
gubernatorial race - hardly the face of
fundamentalist Islam.
But if the latest
LSI poll is any indication - and historically its
research has been - it's going to take more than
cosmetics to reinvigorate Indonesia's largest,
floundering, Islamic party.
Andrew
Steele is the Managing Editor of the
fortnightly Van Zorge Report on Indonesia based in
Jakarta. He may be reached at
asteele@vzh.co.id
(Copyright 2006 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
