PKS is torn between Wiranto, Amien Rais

PKS is torn between Wiranto, Amien Rais

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta

Members of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) are becoming
anxious pending a party decision on which presidential candidate
to endorse, a spokesman said.

On Friday, the fourth day of the campaign period, PKS
spokesman Suryama said that a strenuous tug-of-war between two
camps within the party had prevented a swift decision ahead of
the country's first direct presidential election on July 5.

The PKS, founded in 1999 and which claims a 300,000-strong
membership, reached a surprising seventh place in the April 5
legislative election contested by 24 parties, and won the
majority of votes in the capital.

Representing educated, "modernist" Muslims, the PKS leadership
has announced it will be play the role of opposition, with only
45 out of 550 seats in the legislature.

Suryama said that the party's ranks were divided between those
who support Golkar Party presidential candidate Gen. (ret)
Wiranto and the candidate nominated by the National Mandate Party
(PAN), Amien Rais.

"The two camps have come up with equally strong and reasonable
arguments that can't be discarded easily," he told The Jakarta
Post. "I have to admit that our members have become anxious."

PKS was expected to declare the name of candidates it endorsed
late last week. Suryama earlier said that most party officials
appeared to prefer Wiranto, "But we have a problem with the
political party supporting him," he said, referring to the Golkar
Party, which is seen as a legacy of the New Order, a regime which
suppressed Muslims' political expression.

Suryama added that Wiranto, a former chief security minister
and former military chief, would also be dogged by accusations of
gross human rights violations related to the violence in East
Timor in 1999 and in Jakarta and other cities during riots in
1998.

Wiranto's strength is that he has "a greater chance of beating
Megawati," Suryama said. Wiranto was elected Golkar nominee in a
party convention, a first for the country, while Golkar won most
of the vote, or over 20 percent, in the April poll.

As for Amien, he said that the latter's chances of even
surviving the presidential election was small, let alone his
chances in the runoff expected in September. "Therefore our aim
of replacing Megawati will likely fail," he said.

The party has pledged not to support the incumbent president,
Megawati Soekarnoputri, in the July polls because of her failure
to achieve significant progress in the last three years of her
administration.

However, critics of the PKS say that its rejection of Megawati
is driven by Islamic teachings that renounces women as leaders.

Some PKS members have expressed support for Amien, a former
leader of the Muhammadiyah Muslim organization and once regarded
as a "locomotive of the reform movement", in the hope that he
could help strengthen civil society.