Jakarta – Recent moves by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) may have carved deeper scars into the already tarnished image of Indonesia's Islamic-based political parties, experts say.
"The parties, especially PKS, have very clearly demonstrated to the public how politically inconsistent they can be, considering recent threats and backflips," Burhanuddin Muhtadi of the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The PKS was the first party to align with the Democratic Party (PD) for the July 8 presidential election. The PAN, the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the United Development Party (PPP) then followed suit. All are Islamic-based parties.
However, the decision by PD's presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) to name Bank Indonesia governor Boediono as his running-mate sparked anger with both the PKS and PAN.
The PKS first questioned Boediono's faith in Islam then threatened to quit the coalition if SBY insisted on keeping the senior economist as his vice-presidential candidate.
Finally though the PKS decided to remain allied with the PD after a special meeting called with SBY on Friday. "PKS' actions reveal their true colors as an inconsistent party. The party's executives were the ones who suggested SBY name a technocrat as his running mate," Burhanuddin said.
"But when Golkar broke from PD, the PKS proposed the vice-presidential candidate come from the political parties (withing the coalition). SBY then picked a technocrat, Boediono, and all of a sudden PKS' executives were crying out their disappointment. They claimed Boediono did not represent Islam but was a neoliberalist."
The popularity of Islamic-based parties decreased significantly in the 2009 legislative elections. The top three spots were ruled by nationalist based parties – PD, Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
An Indonesian expert from the Northwestern University in Chicago, Jeffrey Winters, shared similar views. He criticized the parties' manoeuvres as "shameful" and said they could have maintained their integrity if they went about the whole situation differently.
"The behavior of PKS and PAN was especially shameful. It looked for a moment like they had finally found a principled issue on which they could take a stand with their rejection of Boediono as SBY's choice for vice president," he said.
"Politicians from many parties, not just Islamic-based ones, had acted without principles recently, Winters said. "There are no issues or principles behind any of the manoeuvres on the part of the political parties," he said.
"Behind the scenes, large sums of money were the central issue of negotiations in every aspect of the process I observed or discovered through interviews while the horse-trading was underway." (hdt)