Prospect of an Islamic presidential candidates

Muhammad Qodari, Indonesian Research Institute (LSI), Jakarta, qodari@hotmail.com

A compromise has finally sealed the law on presidential elections. That compromise has also opened opportunities for a large pool of presidential candidates. This is due to the stipulation in the law that a political party or a combination of political parties winning a minimum of 3 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives (DPR) or 5 percent of the national vote will be eligible to nominate a pair of presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Imagine if the law stipulated a much stricter requirement on seats and votes, say 20 percent as initially proposed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and the Golkar Party. Both nationalist-secular parties would be the only parties to win 20 percent of the total vote and seats.

Given that the results of the 2004 legislative elections will likely not be much different from the elections in 1999, there would have been no more than three pairs of candidates in the first round of the presidential race.

PDI Perjuangan and Golkar would each nominate their own preferred candidates. Golkar is not likely to join forces with PDI Perjuangan. The former New Order ruling party would propose its own candidates, hoping they would survive to the second round of the election, along with Megawati Soekarnoputri and her running mate. What about the second round? That's a whole other battle with different strategies.

But who would be the third pair of candidates? The pair would most likely represent a coalition of Islamic political parties. None of the Islamic-based political parties won more than 15 percent of seats or vote in 1999. Again, taking into account that the voting pattern next year will likely resemble 1999, Islamic political parties will have to form a coalition in order to be able to nominate their own candidates. The only exception would be National Awakening Party (PKB), which may prefer to join forces with either PDI Perjuangan or Golkar.

As the new law has stipulated a threshold of 3 percent of the seats in the House or 5 percent of the total vote, it is likely that we are going to see a very different set of presidential and vice presidential candidates in next year's election. First off, there will be many more pairs of candidates.

This is especially true for the Islamic camp because the law will allow prominent Islamic-based political parties, including PKB, the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Mandate Party (PAN), to meet the threshold. Smaller Islamic parties such as the Crescent Star Party (PBB) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS, formerly the Justice Party or PK) may have to work extra hard to meet the threshold, but they have the potential.

Five Islamic political parties, of course, does not necessarily mean five pairs of candidates, against two pairs from the nationalist camp -- PDI Perjuangan and Golkar. Some coalitions may be formed, within the same or across ideological lines.

It is almost impossible to predict all the different scenarios that could occur. Will the PKS merge with the PBB, considering both have the same conservative Islamic leanings? Or is it going to continue its current cooperation with PAN (together PAN and PKS form the Reform Faction in the House)?

Yet another coalition is possible as the PKS may become the leader of the "minor" Islamic political parties -- parties with very small numbers of votes, to the extent that they are not eligible by themselves to nominate candidates.

Yet all these scenarios may be too good to be true. Would the PKB really join a coalition with PAN given the long rivalry between their respective main bases, the two largest Islamic organizations in the country -- Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah?

Despite the fact that the current vice president and chairman of the PPP, Hamzah Haz, is an NU follower and perhaps more than half of PPP's votes in 1999 came from NU members, it is also unlikely that the PKB would form a coalition with the PPP for numerous reasons: the NU's past disappointment with the PPP and the rivalry between the PKB's main figure, former president Abdurrahman Wahid, and Hamzah Haz, to name just two.

History has shown that in this Muslim-dominated country, Islamic political parties tend to compete rather than cooperate with each other. This is because each political party has claimed to be the "true" Islamic party.

There have also been rivalries among Islamic political leaders -- even within the same political party. Unity has never been the "trademark" of Islamic political parties. Five Islamic political parties united in the early 1970s to form the PPP. Ironically, this unity was imposed and engineered by former president Soeharto and his political operators.

If the law on presidential elections stipulated 20 percent or more of the total vote or seats in the House as a condition for nominating presidential and vice presidential candidates, we would probably see the first "formal" coalition signed by Islamic political parties with a common purpose to nominate Islamic candidates (an informal and very loose coalition, the "axis force" led by Amien Rais, was formed in 1999 to support Abdurrahman Wahid's candidacy against Megawati in the presidential election).

However, given the newly approved presidential election law, and also the country's past record, a "united Islamic front" is once again just a hope, not a reality.