Indonesians reject Islamic parties at polls
WHILE, from Pakistan to Gaza and Lebanon, militant Islamic movements have gained ground largely because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, compounded by the gross injustices perpetrated on the Palestinians by Israel, it is reported that Islamic parties did poorly in the general elections held on April 9 in Indonesia.
Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority in the world with about 240 million people, of which 88% are Muslims.
Although elections were held on April 9, it will take about a month to know the result with certainty because Indonesia is an archipelagic country with more than 13,000 islands, covering a total area of 1,904,569 square kilometres divided into 33 provinces.
It is striking that early results from parliamentary elections in the largest Muslim-majority Indonesia have reaffirmed the appeal of broad-based secular parties over Islamic-oriented rivals. It is a repeat of what we witnessed earlier in the December 29 parliamentary elections in Bangladesh.
The three largest secular parties took more than half of the votes, according to projections based on poll sampling. The Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, the most conservative Islamist party in the race, polled around 8%. Other Muslim parties vying for parliamentary seats saw their share of the national vote fall. A total of 38 parties contested the elections.
In the 2004 election, Islamic parties won more than 38% of the votes. This year they will end up with less than 26% according to the Indonesian Survey Institute, an independent polling firm.
The 2009 outcome suggests that the surge of support for Islamists in the last polls in 2004, at a time of uproar in the Muslim world over America's "war on terror," may have died for Indonesia's secular democracy. Furthermore, the ideology canvassed by Islamic parties does not appeal to the majority of voters.
Calls for Islamic-based justice and morality appear to have gone unheeded as most voters opted for politicians who campaigned on the economy and the battle against poverty. Even before the vote, many Islamist politicians had begun moving to the center, downplaying divisive issues of faith and supporting programs to help the poor.
It appears that joining governing coalitions has tempered some of their zeal and forced Islamic parties into pragmatic alliances with secular partners. At the same time, the secular partners have put economic and social justice issues in the front.
The result of the parliamentary poll demonstrates that Indonesians have understood that secularism does not equate to atheism; indeed, many secularists have counted themselves as religious persons but they kept religion private. Secularism means a policy of avoiding entanglement between government and religion, of non-discrimination among religions, and of guaranteeing human rights of all citizens, regardless of faith.
Azyumardi Azra, Director of the Graduate School of Syarif Hedayetullah Islamic University said: "People in general do not feel that there should be an integration of faith and politics."
Some observers warn that Islamic orthodoxy still poses a threat to Indonesia, a patchwork of faiths and ethnicities. Greater piety in public life sows alarm among non-Muslims, who fear a gradual retreat from the nation's secular foundations. But the tepid support at the ballot box for Islamist parties suggests these groups face an uphill climb.
"Indonesia's Muslim electorate is not interested in an Islamist agenda. Indonesia is a very religious country, there's a lot of spirituality, and this is increasing in public life. But that doesn't mean that Indonesians want a religious state," says Robin Bush, country director of the Asia Foundation. On the other hand, Sidney Jones, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Jakarta says: "Islamist politicians may have lost ground in the polls but their agenda hasn't gone away."
Indonesian scholars believe that on a deeper level some of the parties' fundamentalist measures are said to have alienated traditionally moderate Indonesians. Furthermore, once in office the pristine image of Islamic parties was tarnished after several of their lawmakers were prosecuted for corruption. One member of the hard-line Islamic party the Prosperous Justice Party is under investigation in a bribery case.
The country's major secular parties, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, are strong believers in secular government. President Yudhoyono (59), a former general of the army with a Ph-D degree, has reportedly a strong lead over former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, seen as his main rival in the July 8 presidential election.
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