SP/Carlos Paath, Ezra Sihite & Rizky Amelia – It was with great fanfare that Anis Matta was appointed the new president of the Prosperous Justice Party on Friday.

But two days later, rifts in the country's biggest Islamic party have become apparent, with recriminations echoing that the party chose the wrong person to guide it out of a historic low.

"Anis was the worst choice that the party could have made out of the options available," said Karel Susetyo, a political analyst from Point Indonesia, a think tank. "As the party's secretary general, he made no meaningful achievements, and he continues to be implicated in a corruption case."

Anis was promoted last week by the party known as the PKS to replace Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq, the previous president, who was arrested on Thursday after being named a bribery suspect by antigraft investigators.

Many analysts had assumed that the party, one of the few major parties with a relatively clean record on graft, would have appointed Hidayat Nurwahid, a former PKS president, to guide the party through the current scandal.

The decision to name Anis, however, has stunned observers and left party stalwarts pointing the finger.

"I doubt that Anis can be the uniting force that the party needs right now," Karel said on Sunday. "The issue of trustworthiness is paramount in this case, and he doesn't have that because he's still tainted by the Budget Committee scandal."

Karel was referring to allegations made repeatedly by Wa Ode Nurhayati, a former legislator from the National Mandate Party (PAN), that Anis, as the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives overseeing the House Budget Committee, had rigged funding for regional development.

Wa Ode, who was convicted and sentenced last October to six years in prison in a separate bribery case, claimed that Anis took a Rp 7.7 billion ($793,000) kickback to divert a Rp 40 billion allocation meant for Papua to other regions in 2011. However, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) says there is no evidence yet to corroborate her claim.

Justice versus prosperity

Karel warned that the PKS had split into two factions. He identified one, made up of more conservative members and holdovers from the party's days as the Justice Party (PK), as the "justice" faction. The other, he said, is comprised of newer and more politically savvy members like Anis and Luthfi, called the "prosperity" faction.

The justice proponents, Karel argued, would have taken a firm line on Luthfi's case. They certainly would not have championed the former president, which Anis did in an emotion-laden speech after his appointment last week.

He added that the prosperity branch, however, was different, practicing what he called "a more flexible form of politics."

Yusuf Supendi, a PK co-founder, acknowledged that there was a rift between the two sides and that Anis's appointment would further polarize the PKS.

"The war between the party members will never be over. There will always be in-fighting," he said. Anis, he added, was "110 percent from the prosperity faction."

Mashadi, another PK co-founder, called for the PKS to disband in the wake of Luthfi's arrest and Anis's appointment. "With Luthfi's case coming to light, the PKS leadership should simply declare the party disbanded," Mashadi said.

"The case doesn't just reflect badly on the party. It also compels the [prosperity] members to face up to what they've done. This kind of scandal can't be erased in just one or two generations."

Mashadi said Luthfi's arrest was the culmination of the "political taint" of the prosperity faction, blasting the latter for breaking with the PKS's core conservative values by practicing dirty politics.

"The way they've conducted themselves in the political arena is far from the example that they should be setting for the Muslim faithful," he said.

'Arrest Anis'

Yusuf said that Anis faced "a really tough task ahead" in helping the PKS recover from the scandal and perform well in the 2014 legislative election.

"He's got to find a way to get the party members believing in their leader again, and this means winning back voters' trust," he said. "If he can't do it, then the PKS should prepare to bow out after the elections."

J. Kristiadi, a political analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, argued that the burden of reviving the PKS's fortunes was not for Anis to bear alone.

"This is not a responsibility that should be borne by a single person over the long term," he said. "The PKS has to have the [structural] strength [to support Anis]. It'll take more than just a great character; it'll take a great party system."

He added that public trust in the party would be difficult to restore, given the damage done by Luthfi's case to the PKS's long reputation as one of the cleanest major parties in the country.

He said the way forward was for the party to forsake any self-interest image-building campaign, and instead position itself as a champion of the people. "It must not fall back on political image-building," Kristiadi warned.

Yusuf, however, said the only way to stop what he called the destruction of the PKS was for the prosperity faction leaders to be arrested along with Luthfi.

"If you ask me, the party can only be saved if Anis and Hilmy are arrested," he said, referring to Hilmy Haminuddin, an Anis protege and new chairman of the PKS's advisory council. "Short of their arrest, the PKS can't be saved," he insisted.

Yusuf also called on Luthfi, Anis and other prominent prosperity faction members, including Tifatul Sembiring, the gaffe-prone minister of communications and information technology, to swear a "death oath" that they were not implicated in any corruption cases.

Luthfi was arrested on suspicion of being the recipient of a Rp 1 billion bribe given to Ahmad Fathanah, a PKS member caught taking the money from two executives from Indoguna Utama, a meat-importing company.

The KPK alleges that Luthfi had demanded the money in exchange for helping steer a government meat import contract to the company. The plan was to use his influence over PKS legislators and government officials to direct the contracts, investigators say.

The contracts are determined by the Agriculture Ministry, whose head, Suswono, is a PKS member. However, he has not yet been implicated in the case.