By Vian Abdullah
Indonesian Political Parties have always been somewhat of an anomaly in Indonesia. In a national level, they don’t really seem to follow any particular ideology. In fact, most of them seems to be only identified by their charismatic leaders, who usually decides the direction that they will go to. Contrast this to parties in Europe, where political parties are identified by the specific policies and political philosophies that they embody. Indonesia’s parties seem to only be a vehicle for powerful actors to gain influence in government. A question that arises is if these parties can truly be segregated into
The parties themselves can be classified into two categories: the Pancasila-oriented (secular/nationalist) parties and the self-declared Islamic parties. The more secular parties would include PDI-P, Golkar, Gerindra, the Democratic Party and Nasdem. The Islamic parties would include PKS, PAN, PPP and PKB.
With regards to their political positions at a glance, PDI-P fancies itself as a secular nationalist and populist party that fights for the lower class. During the Yudhoyono’s presidency, it appeared as the opposition party that supported religious tolerance and opposed an Islamic ideology for the state. Gerindra appears to be fiercer in their nationalistic ideology, lead by former army general Prabowo Subianto, with a slight awareness for foreign investment and a balance of subsidy cuts. The Democratic Party appears as a catch-all, centrist party and does not have a firm philosophy that it subscribes to. However, during Yudhoyono’s presidency, it was clear that he supported economic liberalisation, an internationalist outlook, ans cultural pluralism. Golkar is another secular, nationalist party that promotes religious tolerance, though it does have the history of being the oldest party currently operating in Indonesia. Nasdem seems to only be a proxy and complementary party for PDI-P as well as a tool for media mogul Surya Paloh to exert his influence.
The Islamic party PKS is known for its pragmatic approach to Islam; the party wants to appeal to both rural and progressive, urban Muslims. Historically being in favour of sharia law, recently it decided against adopting the conservative doctrine. PAN can be seen as possibly the most moderate of all the Islamic parties, it is unofficially affiliated with the Muhammadiyah movement and has even supported several Christian candidates. It had previously tried to steal votes from PKS by appealing to urban, middle-class Muslims and is the Islamic party that supports the Pancasila the most. PPP can be argued as the most hard-line Islamic party, they consider Shia Islam and the Ahmadiyya movement to be heretical. The PKB has deeps roots in the organisation Nahdlatul Ulama, one of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisations, with most of its base being the rural, traditionalist Javanese folk.
Those descriptions don’t really give a good outlook on each party’s specific policies, especially among other secular and other Islamic parties. It doesn’t really give a clear picture on what they would do if they were in power, not much regarding their fiscal, foreign and environmental policy. In response to this perceived vagueness, the LSI (Indonesian Survey Institute) along with researchers from the Australian National University conducted a survey of representative from several provincial legislatures. They wanted to find out if the various national parties differ significant with their position on various political issues.
The results of the research indicated that the parties only slightly differed from each other. The only issue where parties actually drifted in position would be for religion, making the Secular-Islamic split more prevalent. One of the key questions in the survey was whether their party’s ideology was primarily based more on the Pancasila or Islam; 10 would imply Islam, 1 would imply pluralism. The most Islamic party turned out to be PPP (Unity Development Party) at 7.22 while the most pluralist party was PDI-P at 1.82. Similar results were gotten when they were asked whether Islam should have a larger role in politics. Again, PDI-P leaned towards it having a smaller role while PPP was most in favour in having its role be expanded.
There was also a divide between the Pancasila-oriented and the Islamic parties on whether they agreed that most Indonesian parties have the same ideology. Once again, the parties of Golkar, Nasdem, Gerindra, Hanura, and the Democrats contrasted with the Islamic parties on this issue. The former generally seems to think that the various parties have similar ideologies, whilst the latter considered that the parties have different philosophies. The party that did not follow this trend was PDI-P, who mostly disagreed about the similarities between the parties, as it sees itself as the most pluralist out of all the parties
For the rest of the survey, the parties generally clustered with one another. They were generally in favour of women’s emancipation, generally supported the ideals of the reformation, they were not incredibly different when asked whether they wanted a freer market or a more mixed economy, all of the parties claimed that they strive to help the poor rather than please investors.
A follow-up survey by the same team was done, this time is focused on the political parties’ stances towards minorities in Indonesia. In this survey, the results appear to be as expected. When they asked whether the government should prioritise Islam over other religions, the Islamic parties from before overwhelmingly agreed to it. They are closely followed by Gerindra, the secular part with close relationships with PKS and to an extent, PAN. PDI-P and Nasdem trailed last in their prioritisation of Islam. Similar results were found when they were asked whether blasphemy laws should be punished harder, though with more overall support. The gap between the parties became larger when given the question whether it is important to vote for a Muslim leader, with PDI-P by far being the most liberal about it.
The results became more interesting when they were asked whether Chinese Indonesians had too much political influence. As there didn’t seem to be a Secular-Islamic split in this case, with the Democrats most agreeing to the notion. PDI-P manages to be the most pluralist party again, with the lowest objection to Chinese Indonesian political influence. They were also the party that was the most comfortable with Chinese Indonesians holding public leadership. The last question as whether they think the Communist Party (PKI) is trying to return, the results speak for themselves.
(Parliaments and oligarchs, Leftism and Suharto)
Looking at the results from the various questions, it is unquestionable that an ideological divide does indeed exist between the various political parties, though they are mostly centred around social views and Islamic influence. With almost every question in the survey, the main divide was between the religious and secular parties. Though in hindsight, it is much of an oversimplification to use the term “secular” when describing these parties. As they have wide and extensive connections to the religious elite. Just look at Jokowi choosing Ma’ruf Amin, chairman of the Indonesian Ulama Council and leader of Nahdlatul Ulama and Gerindra having close relations to the Islamic parties on top of recognition from several clerics around the country. But besides that, any sort of economic policies that they have aren’t tied to ideas like social democracy or free markets; they seem to be more directed by whoever is running the party at the given moment, and they can adjust their priorities to enter into a coalition government.
So the confusion with the stances of the Indonesian political parties is very understandable, since parties sometimes teams up with other parties that seem to be similar to the ones they are against. Parties’ opposition to one another is not on the grounds of ideology, but on specific policy decisions. Though I will admit that I have somewhat accustomed towards the parliamentary European model, where parties are created to be the voice of ideologies or the instigator of political movement. Perhaps the reason why Indonesian parties, aside for their stance on Islam, rarely ever assign themselves to a particular philosophy is simply because one party would have to be assigned as the de facto leftist, secularist, social democratic party. With the surprising amount of representatives fearing the revival of the Communist Party, and with Indonesians generally being unexposed to the predominantly European political spectrum, it’s safe to say that not approaching the subject is the most effective way to get votes.
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