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.