Is there an ideological cleavage in 2014?
With an ideologically distinct and streamlined coalition behind him, Jokowi would be well-served embracing his pluralist and reformist credentials and turning his attention from internal battles to the business of the presidential campaign.
Tom Power, New Mandala
The presidential tickets for the upcoming election have been finalised, and with only two sets of candidates standing, a single-round showdown is now certain. For all intents and purposes, the presidential campaign commenced on Monday 19 May, with vice-presidential candidates announced to run alongside Joko Widodo of PDIP and Prabowo Subianto of Gerindra, and their nominating coalitions finalised. For the record, on 9 July, Prabowo and National Mandate Party (PAN) chairperson Hatta Rajasa (Prabowo-Hatta) will be pitted against Jokowi and former vice-president Jusuf Kalla (Jokowi-JK). The vice-presidential nominations resulted from weeks of wrangling, with Hatta initially hoping to run alongside Jokowi, and Jokowi prevaricating over several alternatives to Kalla (the preferred choice of PDIP chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri).
However, a more interesting facet of the pre-declaration negotiations relates to the political coalitions established in support of the two candidate pairs. As the candidates and their coalition backers effectively launched their election bids, before a television audience of millions, the contrast between these two campaigns was, in Indonesian terms, quite remarkable. I will run over some of the more interesting elements of the last several weeks of inter- and intra-party bargaining, with an eye to the ideological positioning resulting from the coalition formation process, and try to ascertain what these developments could mean for the coming campaign.
Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa alongside their political allies – among them Aburizal Bakrie, Amien Rais, Anis Matta, and Suryadharma Ali, at the Indonesian Electoral Commission office in Jakarta [source: TribunNews].
Party cleavages
Surprisingly, two of the 12 parties to contest the national elections are not part of either nominating coalition: SBY—who appears wary of a Prabowo presidency and enjoys a frosty relationship with Megawati—has declared that his Democrat Party (PD) will not (yet) align with either camp, despite his status as Hatta’s in-law. Meanwhile, the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI)—which won less than 1% of the national vote—was ignored by PDIP when it sought to support Jokowi.
Revealingly, particularly given the prevalence of scholarly discourse which downplays the role of ideology in Indonesian politics, the nominating coalitions have formed, to some extent, along ideological lines. Ideological and cultural ‘cleavages’—once treated as the primary analytical lens for the study of Indonesian party politics—no doubt diminished during the New Order, and their academic utility has faced widespread scepticism since that regime’s collapse. However, the coalitions ahead of this year’s presidential election, which have arisen through an organic process of negotiation and contestation, are in fact quite ideologically defined.
It is useful here to review the ideological spectrum typically applied to Indonesian politics, which places parties along a continuum from the ‘secular-nationalist’ PDIP—which has championed the separation of religion and state—to the pseudo-Islamist parties (PKS, PPP, PBB) which favour an enhanced role for Islam in governmental and policymaking processes. The parties which occupy the centre of this spectrum—categorised as “inclusivist” by political scholar and recent presidential hopeful Anies Baswedan—include Golkar, PD, PKB and PAN. These parties are all ‘Pancasila-ist’ according to their party statutes, but have been comparatively willing to compromise on Islam-inspired political agendas (PD and Golkar), or maintain constituent ties to Islamic mass organisations (PKB and PAN).
The more recently-established Gerindra, Hanura and Nasdem—lacking well-established parliamentary track records—are not easily incorporated into this schema. All were founded on pro-Pancasila platforms and boast sizeable non-Muslim memberships (indeed, Hanura was the only party to propose a non-Muslim presidential or vice-presidential candidate during the legislative campaign). While none directly promote Islamic agendas within their statutes, a clause within theGerindra party manifesto which purports to ‘protect religious purity’ (‘menjaga kemurnian agama’) has been interpreted as over-reaching into religious affairs, and even threatening the religious freedoms of minority groups such as Shia and Ahmadiyah (a frequent criticism of the Yudhoyono government relates to its failure to protect such groups from persecution). Coupled with Prabowo’s willingness to adopt a more ‘Islamic’ tone in his campaign (discussed below) it seems there is sufficient evidence to doubt Gerindra’s commitment to a ‘secular’ agenda. For these reasons, Gerindra cannot be included in the ‘secular-nationalist’ camp.
