What the presidential election nominations tell us about Indonesian politics

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, who ran his 2014 campaign on a nationalist and inclusive platform, raised eyebrows recently when he chose the 75-year-old Muslim cleric and chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), Ma’ruf Amin, as his vice-presidential candidate in his re-election bid next year.

No less a surprise was the choice of his challenger, former army general and chairman of Gerindra Party Prabowo Subianto. He counts conservative Muslims as his supporter base and picked billionaire Deputy Governor of Jakarta Sandiaga Uno as his running mate.

Their choices were nothing short of plot twists in a political saga littered with intense lobbying, intrigues and even bickering among different political factions in both camps. More importantly, it provided glimpses into the reality of Indonesian politics today.

Indonesia’s 2017 Electoral Law stipulates that a presidential candidate must receive the endorsement of at least 20 per cent of the total seats in the House of Representatives (DPR) or 25 per cent of the votes cast for political parties in the 2014 legislative election.

Since the biggest faction in DPR, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), commands only 19 per cent of DPR seats, representing 18.9 per cent of the votes, it needed to form coalitions to satisfy the threshold.

The strictures also mean that only proven candidates can muster enough political support from the parties to contest the election, which is why it was long apparent that a re-run of the 2014 contestation between Mr Widodo and Mr Subianto would be the likeliest scenario.

This only left the vice-presidential candidacies up for jostling among the different political parties.

The first bit of drama came from Mr Muhaimin Iskandar, chairman of the National Awakening Party, a minor member in Mr Widodo’s coalition, who lobbied to influence the outcome in the vice-presidential selection process.

Initially he led an overt campaign to nominate himself. He told the press it would be ‘dangerous’ if Mr Widodo chose someone else except him despite his own poor performance in surveys. His party even suggested that Mr Iskandar would run for president himself if not chosen.

The Islamic parties in Mr Subianto’s coalition, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Justice Prosperity Party (PKS), moved to galvanise support from Muslim clerics who had taken part in the 2016 massive Islamist rallies against Mr Widodo’s then political ally, the Chinese Christian Governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahja Purnama.

The group, known as GNPF or the National Movement to Defend Fatwa, has been an active campaigner for the #gantipresident2019 (vote in a new president) movement and is seen as the backbone of Mr Subianto’s support base.

At the end of its meeting, it recommended two names, the popular hardline preacher-cleric Abdul Somad and senior PKS figure Salim Segaf Al-Jufri for Mr Subianto to choose.

In the meantime, the nationalist Democratic Party (PD), headed by the country’s previous President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono , made overtures to join Mr Subianto on the condition that his eldest son, the 40-year-old former army major Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, be made Mr Subianto’s running mate.   

Yet on Aug 8, even before Mr Subianto formally announced his pick, the Deputy Secretary General of PD, Andi Arief, let the cat out of the bag on Twitter when he called Mr Subianto a ‘cardboard general’ for choosing Mr Uno as his running mate.

Mr Arief claimed that Mr Subianto had agreed to ‘purchase’ the support of PKS and PAN for 500 billion rupiahs (S$47 million) each.

Back in Mr Widodo’s camp, the president was after a running mate with a strong connection to Nadhatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Islamic mass organisation, to negate the prevalent perception that he is not ‘Muslim enough.’

The name Mahfud MD, former chief justice of the Constitutional Court, who is close to the founding family of NU, came up and was regarded as a favourite.

By Mr Mahfud’s own admission, he was duly contacted by Mr Widodo’s aides who asked him to prepare himself to be declared the president’s running mate.

There are a number of accounts to explain why Mr Widodo eventually picked Mr Amin instead of Mr Mahfud.

Mr Mahfud appeared on national television on Aug 14 to say that it was Mr Amin who pressured NU leadership to declare him to be a non-NU figure. Mr Amin also authorised a press statement to say that NU would not mobilise its members to support Mr Widodo if his running mate was not from NU.

Another account claims that other coalition partners were also against Mr Mahfud for fear that come the 2024 election, he would have an advantage as a former vice-president over their own candidates.

The timing is also noteworthy. Mr Arief’s tweet meant that the identity of Mr Subianto’s running mate was widely known before Mr Widodo made known his.

Having a cleric for one of the two top posts in Indonesia is nothing new. Former President Megawati Soekarnoputri, now Mr Widodo’s political patron, ran alongside Hasyim Muzadi, an NU cleric, in the 2004 election.

What was surprising in Mr Amin’s candidacy was his known hardline stance on pluralism and minority groups in the past. He was also one of the clerics who masterminded the anti-Purnama rallies and even testified against Purnama at his blasphemy trial.

Tellingly, throughout the vice-presidential saga, primordial themes such as religion, identity politics, money and shared backgrounds surfaced time and again in both camps as factors when coalescing with one another.

Palpably missing were the themes of policy approach and shared visions in determining political coalitions. These only materialised almost as an afterthought for the benefit of the press conference. 

Time and again, vested interests and horse trading triumph over principles.

PDI-P may be the main ruling party behind President Jokowi’s national government, constantly at loggerheads with opposition Gerindra, but in the East Java gubernatorial election recently, for instance, the two parties were in coalition.

More dire still, this has become the new normal as Indonesians try to rationalise it by saying that ‘politics is fluid and dynamic’.

Yet when fluidity almost always translates to unprincipled opportunism, effective governance and coherent policies often prove to be ever elusive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Johannes Nugroho is a writer from Surabaya.