internal dynamics of the prosperous justice party and jamaah tarbiyah 33
statutes. Many who see these as intentional point to the double face of
the party. Yet closer analysis shows that, in fact, these inconsistencies
represent disagreements among the statute’s authors and deep divisions
within the party itself. For instance, there are clauses in its statute that
stipulate that the pks is an open party and all Indonesians aged 17 and
over are eligible to become members. However, other clauses in the same
statute prescribe that in order to become a party member it is necessary
to recite an oath that includes the Islamicshahadah– ‘there is no God but
Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger’. This would make them, at least
nominally, Muslims – thus, only Muslims can become party members.¹⁴
Lastly, the party’s political behaviour also records internal differences.
For example, the party saw the 1999 legislative elections as just another
activity of religious propagation (dakwahortabligh). During the election
campaign the party leadership instructed its activists to intensify their
religious activities, to persuade people to accept Islam instead of pro-
moting their party, and to pray to God to help them win the elections.
However, five years later, during the 2004 elections, the same leadership
body issued a fatwa to its activists and members to mobilise people to
vote for the party in the elections, regardless of whether they agreed with
the party’s political perspectives or not.¹⁵
Close observation reveals that tensions and frictions between the jt
and pks – as well as inside each of the two – stem from their experiences in
democratic political competition. Basically, jt members are pks members.
However, intensive and increasingly systematic and specialised political
activities separate pks activists from other jt members who do not get
involved in party organisations. pks activists are increasingly pragmatic
in their behaviour, while jt members are more likely to remain normative.
Inside the pks, there are divisions between ‘office oriented’ and ‘policy
oriented’ politicians: the former perceive politics as a competition to
maximise power and as a resource that has to be pursued in its own way
and with its own rules, while the latter perceive politics as a competition
to influence public policies and something that needs to be pursued
in accordance with Islamic principles. Furthermore, inside the ‘office
oriented’ camp there are ‘pragmatists’ who have established networks with
former President Suharto’s family, the military and Chinese businessmen,
and pushed the idea that the party should become an open, secular,
political party. There are also ‘reformists’, who are politically closer to
the networks of democratic activists that brought down the Suharto
regime and who moved the pks’s political agenda in line with the wider
Ibid., 176.
Ibid., 213–218.