Religion not prominent in Indonesian polls

Religion not prominent in Indonesian polls

Thang D. Nguyen, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

Indonesia held its general elections, which will be followed
by a presidential election set to take place in July.

Unlike the recent elections in neighboring Malaysia, which
were filled with piety politics, religion does not dominate
election campaigns in Indonesia, home to the world's largest
Muslim population.

Lately, there has been a growing concern about the so-called
"green wave", the rising Islamisation of politics in the Muslim
world, for fear of societies being turned into theocracies if an
Islamic party wins and terrorist acts are carried out by radical
Muslims.

As the results of the March 21 elections in Malaysia
illustrated, the "greenisation" of elections has its weaknesses.

The hardline Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) campaigned with the
line that Malaysian voters "will go to heaven for choosing an
Islamic party, while those who support un-Islamic parties will
logically go to hell".

The end result was PAS lost, and Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi's National Front, a multi-ethnic party with a progressive,
economics-oriented platform, won big.

Similarly, religion is the last thing on Indonesians' minds as
they go to the polls.

An early-March survey conducted across the country by the
International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) confirms
this trend. Survey participants were asked what mattered most to
them as criteria in the elections: Employment, political
stability, transparency, education and religion, among other
things. While other criteria scored as high as 40 per cent,
religion scored a tiny 4 per cent.

The same survey also showed the most popular parties are not
Islamic ones. Of the 24 contesting parties, the leading three are
Golkar (short for Golongan Karya, or Functional Group); the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), led by President
Megawati Soekarnoputri; and the National Mandate Party (PAN), led
by Speaker of Parliament Amien Rais.

A party is considered Islamic only when its platform is Islam-
based. Thus, even though PAN has many supporters from
Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia's largest Islamic organizations,
it does not qualify as an Islamic party. The same applies to the
National Awakening Party, which is led by former president
Abdurrahman Wahid and has strong support from Nahdlatul Ulama,
another Islamic powerhouse.

The message from this survey is clear: Indonesians want a
democratic society with a strong economy, political stability,
clean government and leadership. These are the deliverables
Indonesian voters want to see from the elections, in both the
parliamentary and presidential rounds.

That is their definition of democracy. Without these
deliverables, democracy has hardly any meaning to the people of
Indonesia -- or their counterparts in other parts of the world,
for that matter.

Even the Islamic parties are not campaigning on a religious,
Islamic platform, as PAS did in Malaysia. Even though Indonesia
is the largest Muslim country in the world, Islam is not its
official religion. In its early years, some lawmakers tried to
persuade founding father Sukarno to institutionalize Islam and so
make Indonesia an Islamic state.

Understanding the complexity of Indonesia as a multi-ethnic,
multi-cultural and multi-religious archipelago, Sukarno offered a
compromise whereby one the five principles of the state ideology
is a "belief in one god". Knowing the majority of its population
are Muslims, Sukarno's wisdom or cleverness lies in the fact that
this "one God" can be Allah, Buddha or Christ, depending on one's
faith.

Islam is still the core religion in Indonesia. In 2002, many
years after Indonesia's founding, a motion to institute Islamic
law was put before the People's Consultative Assembly, but it was
rejected.

As for the people of Indonesia, most do not desire a
theocracy. As the IFES survey showed, they are rational enough to
realize what matters most is that their basic needs -- such as
food, shelter, water and clothing -- are met, and religion is not
one of them.

If anything, to paraphrase Karl Marx, religion is the opium of
the people: They can smoke it, but they can't eat it.