Last month’s election result shows falling popular support for Islamic parties, with implications for July’s presidential poll, writes Dr Greg Fealy.
A popular bumper sticker among Indonesian Islamic activists in recent years declares: “Islam is the solution.” For many of these activists, this slogan captured a mood of Islamic revival and confidence – a sense that Islam was reasserting itself in the social and political life of the country after years of marginalisation.
The results of last month’s legislative elections, however, provide compelling evidence that this sanguine attitude is misplaced, at least for the moment. Despite the fact that almost 90 per cent of the electorate is Muslim, Islamic parties gained less than 30 per cent of the vote – their lowest figure over the three democratic elections held after the downfall of President Soeharto in 1998. The declining vote for these parties deserves close analysis for what it tells us about popular attitudes towards religion in politics. The majority of Muslim voters appear not to regard Islam as critical to their electoral decisions, even though it may be important in their personal lives.
Before examining the reasons for these parties’ falling support, some “mapping” of Indonesian political Islam is necessary. Of the 38 parties contesting the national elections, ten can be regarded as “Islamic” because they have either a formal ideological basis in Islam or rely on an overtly Islamic identity for most of their support. According to both the provisional result of the Election Commission and the four quick count polls conducted on election day, these ten parties are likely to gain about 29 per cent of the national vote, down from 38 per cent in 2004 and 37 per cent in 1999. All but one of the established Islamic parties suffered a decline in their share of the vote and only four of these parties gained enough votes to clear the 2.5 per cent threshold for gaining seats in parliament: the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), currently with 8.2 per cent of the vote according the Election Commission, the National Mandate Party (PAN) with 6.3 per cent, the United Development Party (PPP) with 5.2 per cent and the National Awakening Party (PKB) with 5.2 per cent. The drop in support for PPP and PKB is especially notable: in 1999, these were the two biggest Islamic parties, but the vote for both has fallen by more than half in the past two elections.
This poor result for Islamic parties is even more striking if we consider broader historical and religio-cultural trends. In Indonesia’s first free and fair election in 1955 Islamic parties gained 44 per cent of the vote, 15 per cent more than in this year’s election – despite the fact that Islamic pietism has become far more pronounced in the intervening years. A far higher percentage of Muslims now attend diligently to regular prayer, fasting during Ramadhan, attending Qur’anic study groups, and consuming “Islamic products,” such as shari’a banking and Muslim clothing. These contrasting trends – rising religiosity and falling support for political Islam – indicate that many devout Muslims no longer see voting as “confessional” behaviour, explicitly linked to their faith.
This piece continues at Inside Story: http://inside.org.au/indonesia%e2%80%99s-islamic-parties-in-decline/
Dr Greg Fealy is a senior lecturer and fellow in Indonesian politics at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
Inside Story is edited at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology in association with The Australian National University. Selected articles from Inside Story appear in the Forum section of the Canberra Times.
