part 1
ISLAMIC POLITICAL PARTIES AND
SOCIO-RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONSKees van Dijk
A paradox in present-day Indonesia is that Islam is thriving but that
Islamic political parties are not. With one exception, the pks (Prosperous
Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera), their results in elections held
after 1998 have been poor. This is even more remarkable because some of
these parties are closely linked to socio-religious organisations that do
seem to thrive and have a large following, which in the case of Nahdlatul
Ulama and Muhammadiyah amounts to tens of millions. This indicates
that recruiting or winning over national and local religious leaders to
gain more votes at general elections appears to be less effective than is
often assumed.
Disappointing past election performance confronts politicians of
Islamic parties with a dilemma. They may reach out to non-Muslims,
accepting them as members and recruiting them as candidates, or they
may focus on non-religious issues in their campaign. Such approaches,
however, can backfire. Immediately after May 1998 when the Reform Era
was taking shape new political parties were established, among them
Islamic parties being ‘open’ to others, i.e. to Indonesians with another
religion, due to concerns with Amien Rais of the pan (Partai Amanat
Nasional/National Mandate Party) and Abdurrachman Wahid of the
pkb (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa/National Awakening Party) about the
intensity of communal conflicts in those days, which in some regions
had taken a very violent form. Gradually, the selection of candidates with
a different religion and the downplaying of Islam became a strategy to
tap into new groups of voters, but it has been argued that the decision
not to stress their own, specific, religious stance may have cost votes,
and, indeed, could well explain the poor election results.
While preparing for the general elections of April 2014 a number of
politicians toldThe Jakarta Postin January 2013 how they intended to deal
with what the newspaper called ‘the country’s increasingly secular voters’.¹
The Jakarta Post, 23 January 2013.