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TRaNS special section on “Growing Religious Intolerance in Indonesia”
- Leonard C. Sebastian, Alexander R. Arifianto
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- Journal:
- TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia / Volume 8 / Issue 1 / May 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 March 2020, pp. 1-5
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Rising Islamism and the Struggle for Islamic Authority in Post-Reformasi Indonesia
- Alexander R. Arifianto
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- Journal:
- TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia / Volume 8 / Issue 1 / May 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 September 2019, pp. 37-50
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The successful ‘Defending Islam’ rallies of 2016–2017 provide clear evidence that Islamism is on the rise in contemporary Indonesia. Mainstream Islamic authorities, including groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, are increasingly losing their authority to newer, more conservative Islamic preachers and groups. What explains this phenomenon – and what does it mean for the moderate perspectives that many predicted would dominate Islam in Indonesia in the post-Reformasi era?
This article argues that three main mechanisms can explain the rise of Islamism in Indonesia: 1) the creation of a ‘marketplace of ideas’ in post-Reformasi Indonesia and the way in which this marketplace has contributed to the rise of Islamism and the breakdown of Islamic authority; 2) the ascent of new Islamic authority figures, who propagate their views using new methods, ranging from social media to campus da'wa organisations and community-based activities (majelis taklim); and 3) the growing influence of new Islamic groups and preachers, who are building alliances with established religious elites and politicians. Such alliances strengthen the influence of new Islamic authorities, while further marginalising religious minorities, such as Ahmadi and Shi'a Muslims.
13 - Analysing the Economic Platforms in the Indonesian Presidential Election
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- By Maxensius Tri Sambodo, Alexander R. Arifianto, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
- Edited by Ulla Fionna
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- Book:
- ISEAS Perspective
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 29 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 114-122
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The two sides competing in the Indonesian Presidential election to be held on 9 July — Prabowo Subianto and his Vice Presidential candidate Hatta Rajasa against Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and his running mate Jusuf Kalla — have both submitted their coalition's platforms to the General Elections Commission (KPU).
Whoever becomes president will face the same challenges that outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY) has been trying to address through his economic policies. These challenges are reflected in the targets set by the 2014 state budget, which are: (i) to reduce poverty to 9.0–10.5 per cent (currently 11.47 per cent); (ii) to create new jobs (1 per cent economic growth can generate 200,000 new jobs); (iii) to decrease unemployment to 5.7–5.9 per cent (currently 6.25 per cent); and (iv) to decrease income inequality (the Gini coefficient is currently 0.413).
Prabowo's economic strategy is to expand fiscal spending and invest in a range of new development projects with the goal of increasing economic growth to around 7–10 per cent in the first presidential term (2014–19). At the same time, he aims to reduce the Gini ratio to about 0.31. On the other hand, Jokowi proposes to reduce Indonesia's poverty rate to about 5–6 per cent by 2019 by providing free education and skills improvement for the poor.
This article evaluates Prabowo's and Jokowi's proposals in four economic sectors, namely agriculture, energy, industry and labour, which are important for achieving food security, energy security, and enhancing national competitiveness.
GIVING PROMISES
Prabowo proposes a number of new public spending initiatives in his economic platform and plans to increase the public spending-to-GDP-ratio to 19 per cent of GDP by 2019. (The ratio of government spending to GDP during the SBY administration was about 9 per cent.) This means that government spending will increase dramatically under Prabowo's administration, as indicated by his specific proposals. For instance, he plans to increase public investment in basic infrastructure by Rp1,400 trillion (US$98 billion) between 2015 and 2019. His proposal would allocate funds to all public elementary and secondary schools as well as Islamic schools (pesantrens or madrasahs) in Indonesia, amounting to Rp150 million (US$12,900) per school.
7 - A Snapshot of the Campaigning in Indonesia's 2014 Legislative Elections
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- By Alexander R. Arifianto, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Ulla Fionna, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Gwenael Njoto-Feillard, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
- Edited by Ulla Fionna
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- Book:
- ISEAS Perspective
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 29 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 54-61
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Since 16 March, Indonesia has been in full campaign mode for its 2014 elections. This year's are the fourth legislative and the third direct presidential elections conducted after the country underwent its transition to democracy in 1998. The official campaign period for the national, provincial, and district-level legislative elections will continue until 5 April. After a cooling off period lasting a few days (minggu tenang), polling will take place on 9 April.
New methods are shaping the 2014 campaigns, especially at the grassroots level. First, parties are showing preference for the use of blusukan conducted by candidates to meet with individual voters. Literally meaning going through places in which passage is difficult (crowds, scrubs, narrow alleys, etc.), blusukan is now seen as an essential mode of campaign. This method is supposed to help voters to get to know their candidate at a more personal level. Voters can look for particular personal attributes, while candidates can show that they genuinely care about individual voters’ concerns. Second, although money politics remains an integral part of the campaign approach, the way parties rely on it has changed. The cost of mobilizing voters for mass rallies (pawai) have become more expensive, and parties are now more careful about spending the money on them. Consequently, there are now less rallies and they are only reserved for visits by high-profile leaders. Furthermore, as most parties would be doing the same thing, any advantage that any party may gain from luring supporters with money is cancelled out. As such, money no longer has the kind of power it used to have for buying votes. The role that money will play on the polling day remains unclear.
THE INCREASING POPULARITY OF BLUSUKAN
In past elections, parties preferred a mass mobilization of members and supporters. They typically held mass rallies to draw supporters, usually by staging live music and other kinds of entertainment. This year things have clearly changed. Although parties still conduct these rallies, they are fewer in numbers, and are smaller. Rather, the most interesting aspect in this year's campaign is how the methods generally adopted by most political parties and legislative candidates (calon legislative or calegs) to reach potential voters within their legislative districts (daerah pemilihan or dapil) have changed.
8 - Unpacking the Results of the 2014 Indonesian Legislative Elections
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- By Alexander R. Arifianto, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
- Edited by Ulla Fionna
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- Book:
- ISEAS Perspective
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 29 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 62-74
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The recently concluded legislative election in Indonesia produced several unexpected results. The first one was the underperforming results of the opposition party the Indonesian Democratic Party–Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia–Perjuangan, PDI-P), which failed to capitalize on the popularity of its presidential candidate Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi).
The party is estimated to have won only 19 per cent of the popular vote, far below the expected 25 to 30 per cent that had been predicted by a number of Indonesian public opinion surveys. Another unexpected result of the legislative election was the strong showing of Islamic political parties, which seem to have obtained a combined vote share of nearly 32 per cent. This reverses their poor results in the 2009 legislative elections and defies predictions made by pollsters and journalists that these parties were going to achieve even worse results in this election.
This article unpacks the results of the Indonesian legislative election (pemilihan legislative/pileg) by focusing on these two key findings. Based on a comparison of estimated results from the current election with the final results from previous post-Reformasi elections (1999, 2004, and 2009), it is argued that:
a. Although PDI-P managed to achieve a significant vote gain in this election, it failed to capitalize on the popularity of its presidential candidate, Jokowi, due to the lack of television advertising, local-level campaigning of candidates, possible vote-buying at the grassroots level, and internal rivalries between Jokowi supporters and those of PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, and;
b. The stronger-than-expected results of the Islamic parties should not be interpreted as evidence of political Islam gaining ground in Indonesia. Instead, this result can be attributed mostly to the parties’ strategy to re-focus their campaign within their own primary constituencies.
EVALUATING PDI-P's PERFORMANCE
Twelve national political parties competed in the 2014 legislative election, and PDI-P was favoured to win big, especially after it nominated the popular Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo as its presidential candidate on 14 March 2014. Opinion polls had expected the party to ride the wave of the “Jokowi effect” and comfortably pass the 25 per cent popular vote threshold, which would have enabled it to nominate its own presidential candidate without seeking coalition partners.
6 - Getting to Know the Contestants of the 2014 Indonesian Parliamentary Elections
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- By Ulla Fionna, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Alexander R. Arifianto, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
- Edited by Ulla Fionna
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- Book:
- ISEAS Perspective
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 29 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 41-53
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The upcoming 2014 parliamentary and presidential elections will be the most important yet for Indonesia. Voters will go to the polls to pick their parliamentarians on 9 April, and parties will be vying for support from an increasingly sceptical electorate.
Three elections after major political reforms were carried out, there are strong demands that the democratic transition should continue. The process seems to have stalled with corruption remaining rampant, the legal system still weak and corrupt, and the parliament approving bills that compromise reform objectives. These, along with overall dissatisfaction towards President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY) performance, have fuelled the demand and even urgency, for change in the political leadership.
The parties still remain the gateway to political office at the central and local levels, and party politicians elected into public office are often responsible for managing state or local budgets. Many of these officials are now either jailed, facing trials, or under investigation for corruption allegations. Meanwhile, they are broadly criticized for being inefficient and unproductive. Aside from all these, parties are generally poorly institutionalized — as clearly evidenced by the lack of clear platforms, and by the heavy reliance on particular figures and leaders for support and popularity.
As a result, the upcoming elections will be about which party has the most popular candidates. Parties have therefore been scrambling to identify those who can attract voters. This is made all the more necessary by the fact that specific platforms and party programmes are largely missing. The 2014 election is shaping up to be a race based on image and popularity. Increasingly, it is about those picked by parties to represent them.
THE PARTIES
Partai Nasional Demokrat (Partai Nasdem, National Democratic Party)
Born as a mass organization, it declared itself a party on 26 July 2011. It lists Pancasila as its ideology, and it is the newest party that will be competing. This election is also its first. It was founded and chaired by Surya Paloh, an ambitious former Golkar official who owns Metro TV, the number one Indonesian television news network.
14 - Indonesian Islamic Parties After the 2014 Elections: Divided and Self-Centred
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- By Alexander R. Arifianto, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
- Edited by Ulla Fionna
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- Book:
- ISEAS Perspective
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 29 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2015, pp 123-136
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The recently concluded 2014 legislative and presidential elections highlight the continuing importance of Islamic political parties in Indonesian politics. The parties collectively managed to obtain nearly 32 per cent of the vote share in the national legislative election conducted last April. Out of the five Islamic parties contesting, four supported Prabowo Subianto's presidential candidacy, while only one backed Joko Widodo (Jokowi's). What are the roles these parties will play in the new Indonesian government, now that Jokowi is officially the winner of the presidential election and will be inaugurated as Indonesia's new president on 20 October 2014?
The first section of this article reviews the electoral achievements of Islamic political parties in April's legislative election and the ideological and interest-based differences between these parties. The next section analyses the four largest Islamic parties — the National Awakening Party (PKB), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), and the United Development Party (PPP), discussing whether they will be represented in Jokowi's cabinet, and whether they will likely support or oppose his policy on religious affairs. The final section concludes with some observations on the intermediate prospect of Islamic parties in the new administration.
ELECTORAL RESULTS AND POLITICAL DIVISIONS
Table 1 shows how the five Islamic parties did who competed in the April 2014 legislative election. Collectively, they obtained 31.41 per cent of all the votes cast, surpassing the 25.90 per cent combined vote share they obtained in the 2009 legislative election, which no doubt was a record low for the Islamic parties in post-reformasi Indonesian elections.
The unexpectedly strong results achieved by the five Islamic parties made some observers wonder about the potentially influential role Islam might have in future Indonesian politics, more specifically, whether it would lead to a stronger push for Islamist agendas — most possibly further restrictions on morality-related matters.
However, this possibility is elusive since the Islamic parties are so divided based on their respective ideologies and political interests. Ideologically, the parties are divided over the interpretation of Islamic teachings and their application in Indonesian society. For instance, PKS is widely believed to support stricter interpretations of Islamic law within Indonesian society and some of its politicians have condoned actions by radical Islamic groups that persecute members of religious minorities.