Pramono U. Tanthowi, Jakarta – During the last ten years of the Soeharto regime before his fall in May 1998, there were ubiquitous signs of diverging approaches to the state adopted by the two largest Muslim civil society organizations in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
Muhammadiyah emphasized complementary functions of civil society to the state, while according to NU, civil society should function as a countervailing force to the state's political monopoly.
Since the fall of the New Order regime ten years ago, what are the roles of NU and Muhammadiyah in a democratized Indonesia? Do those diverging approaches remain?
The political landscape of Indonesia has been transformed almost beyond recognition. There were changes in Indonesian politics and society alike. Considerable changes have also occurred in the Muslim community. Muhammadiyah, NU and other organizations akin to them have become more active in political affairs.
Their cadre and members have also been recruited for the newly formed political parties so that nearly all have some sort of Islamic identity. In this respect we find a re-politicization returning to these associations similar to the role they enjoyed prior to their political disengagement in the 1970s and 1980s.
By examining the ways in which those Muslim civil society organizations have exerted their interests and performed their roles these last 10 years, we can see they are now an important part of the political leadership and their interests are now well represented.
However, the problem is that, in reality, there is a significant degree of overlap between NU and Muhammadiyah on the one hand and political society and state on the other. Indonesia after Soeharto provides several examples of this. One of them is their relationship with political parties.
The establishment of two political parties, the National Awakening Party (PKB) and National Mandate Party (PAN) shortly after the downfall of the New Order regime shows an overlap since both the NU and Muhammadiyah, in a different manner, were instrumental in establishing the PKB and the PAN. Moreover, the majority of their members are also primarily drawn from the NU and Muhammadiyah constituencies.
Indeed, this relationship has always been problematic, particularly in an empirical sense. Those civil society organizations have constantly been plunged into practical political affairs: Many Muslim leaders have used the NU organization and its supporters to defend Abdurrahman Abdurrahman's presidency from Oct. 1999 to July 2001, when Abdurrahman was trapped in a bitter conflict with the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile some of NU's top leaders, such as Hasyim Muzadi and Abdurrahman's brother Solahuddin Wahid, took part in the 2004 presidential elections as vice presidential candidates.
Other instances include Muhammadiyah's centrality in Amien Rais' presidential nomination when PAN's performance in the 2004 parliamentary election was poor. And the direct regional head elections (popularly known as Pilkada) have given those organizations more opportunities to both nominate and support candidates, particularly in provinces or districts where they have strong organizational networks and massive membership structures.
However porous the boundary between Muslim civil society organizations and political parties, they essentially have been taking pains to maintain their independence from PKB and PAN interventions. Several instances are worth noting.
First of all, credit is due to both NU and Muhammadiyah as they did not transform themselves into political parties, despite the fact that there was increasing political activism among Indonesian people after the fall of Soeharto.
The leaders of NU and Muhammadiyah at that time could not resist the temptation to establish new political parties for their constituencies, but they did not want to risk their organizations by transforming them into political parties.
This simultaneously proves that the withdrawal of Muhammadiyah and NU in the 1970s and 1980s from practical politics and their return to their original guidelines (khittah) as religious and social organizations was not merely prompted by the fact that they had been subjugated to restrictions, manipulations and pressures during the early years of the Soeharto regime.
Rather, the reason behind their transformation was largely the result of their leaders' awareness that their decade-long involvement in practical politics had prevented them from devoting sufficient attention to their religious and social functions.
Second, in order to avoid a conflict of interest, Muhammadiyah and NU have also prohibited dual leadership (in political parties and the religious organizations), even though there have been exceptional cases violating this decree. Both organizations have also decided that their officials who want to run in executive elections should first step down from their positions in the religious organizations.
The politics of post-Soeharto Indonesia have not been dominated by a single dominant party, volatile coalitions or political alliances. Power-sharing arrangements thus constitute the post-New Order administrations. These power-sharing arrangements have incorporated major political powers, including NU and Muhammadiyah, whose legitimacy was necessary for the resilience of those governments in relation to the political opposition in the parliament and civil society alike.
[The writer is a young Muhammadiyah activist, and is the author of Muslims and Tolerance: Non-Muslim Minorities under Shariah in Indonesia (2008). He can be reached at pramono_utan@yahoo.com.]