islam, politics and change

32 islam, politics and change

the elected governor needed all the other 16 parties in the provincial
Parliament to join forces in order to beat the pks by 56 per cent to 44 per
cent The solidity of its support is also a powerful weapon for the party in

political negotiations, or to press its demands.¹¹

1.1 Internal Fractures

That said, observers will not fail to notice internal – sometimes very
serious – rifts in the party. Firstly, internal tensions had already begun
to surface during its foundation. In 1998, following the regime change,
senior activists of the jt discussed the possibility of forming a political

party to advance their interests and agendas, but reached no agreement

regarding the timing. Some of them agreed that the time was right
to create a political party and join in democratic competition; others

thought they were not ready yet and preferred to stay aloof from power

competition. The dispute was resolved by distributing questionnaires
to around 6,000 Tarbiyah activists around the world. Sixty-eight per
cent of those who returned the questionnaires agreed to create a political

party.¹²

Secondly, different strands can also be found among the party
leadership on how to manage the organisation. During the first four years
of its history, under the name of the Justice Party, its organisation was
decentralised and more democratic, with the highest decision-making
body being the party’s national congress. This meant that sovereignty was
in the hands of the party members. However, from 2003, when the party

was renamed the Prosperous Justice Party, the party’s statute (Anggaran

Rumah Tangga, art) was also amended, and the highest decision-making
body became the elite in the Deliberation Assembly (Majelis Syuro).

This change represents not only different organisational structures, but

also competing political perspectives: i.e. democratic versus pragmatic

tendencies.¹³

Thirdly, different opinions also emerge in the party’s programmatic

platforms. There are several inconsistencies in the party’s organisational

Ahmad-Norma Permata, ‘The Prosperous Justice Party and the Decline of Political
Islam in 2009 Election in Indonesia’, inIslam and the 2009 Indonesian Elections:
Political and Cultural Issues: The Case of Prosperous Justice Party (pks), ed. Remy
Madinier (Bangkok: irasec, 2010), 48–49.
 Collins, ibid.
Ahmad-Norma Permata,Islamist Party and Democratic Participation: Prosperous
Justice Party in Indonesia 1998–2007, PhD dissertation, Westfaelische-Wilhelms
Universität Münster, 2008, 187.