internal dynamics of the prosperous justice party and jamaah tarbiyah 69
tensions between normative jt activists and increasingly pragmatic pks
politicians. Consistently with their attitude in the past, pks leaders under
Hidayat Nur Wahid supported the nomination of Amien Rais. A few
weeks ahead of election day, however, a new option was pushed by Hilmy
Aminuddin to back General Wiranto. Hilmy argued that the top priority
of the pks’s strategic political agenda was to stop Megawati, who had
been made favourite by some observers as she paired with nu chairman
Hasyim Muzadi. Amien Rais was preferred ideologically, yet his chances
of winning were slim. Wiranto, meanwhile, had a greater chance as
he was supported by the winner of the last election, the Golkar party.
Undaunted by Hilmy’s move, Hidayat urged a vote in the Shura Assembly
and won the support of the majority of the members of the party’s highest
decision-making body.
This incident marked the tension and split among the pks leadership
between reformists (those who put the pks agenda in line with the agenda
of democratic reforms) and pragmatists (those who take politics purely
as instrument to achieve power and interests). Hilmy Aminuddin, the
supreme leader of the jt, and the then chairman of the pks’s Shura
Assembly, lost face in front of that council and Wiranto for failing to
bring the party to support him. He blamed Hidayat Nur Wahid for this.
It is said that after that moment he vowed that after 2009, Hidayat, who
in 2004 was elected speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (mpr),
would be an ordinary legislative member.⁸⁹ The tension continued until
a new mpr was installed in 2009, during which period the pragmatic
camp, represented by the party’s general secretary, Anis Matta, was in
constant conflict with the reformist faction under the party president,
Tifatul Sembiring.
Later developments show how the pragmatic camp had the upper
hand. Two simultaneous factors were at play here. On the one hand there
was the powerful position of Hilmy Aminuddin, who combined the
spiritual authority of the jt and the organisational authority of the pks.
On a personal level, he is very charismatic – a combination of spiritual
piety, Sundanese aristocracy and an authoritarian attitude similar to that
of a military commander. As the founder of the jt he has a lot of pupils
under his mentorship, and he gave many of them important positions in
party structures, and together they orchestrate the pks’s management.⁹⁰
On the other hand, the pks’s pragmatic trend is also framed by real world
Arief Munandar, ‘Antara Jamaah dan Partai Politik’, 262.
Arief Munandar, ‘Antara Jamaah dan Partai Politik’, 29, 334;Jakarta Post, 29
March 2011.