Secular-nationalist parties in Indonesia will have the vote of Muslim voters in next year’s election. That is the result of a study carried out by the independent Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) which found the majority of respondents backed Golkar or President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party - Struggle (PDI-P). The findings underscore a pattern in Indonesia’s post-independent history — especially the results of the country’s most democratic elections to date in 1955 and 1999 — where Muslim parties have not been able to challenge the dominance of mainstream parties. The LSI survey found that a coalition of the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), the Justice Party (PKS) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) had the support of just one-third of devout Muslims and 16.2 per cent of secular Muslim respondents. When it came to parties that pushed for the shariah law or an Islamic state, support dipped even further — as low as 14 per cent, according to the survey. An LSI spokesman was quoted in the Jakarta Post as saying: ’The Muslim-based parties do not have enough support to win the majority of the vote in the 2004 election.’
Polling is still in its infancy in Indonesia, but the LSI’s findings are telling because they reinforce other surveys carried out in recent months in which the mainstream parties — PDI-P and Golkar — and their leaders are in front. Against a backdrop of terrorist attacks in the country, support for Muslim-based parties is receding, given concerns that backing for Islamic politicians could pave the way for hardliners to come to power. Observers believe that if any of the five major Islamic parties makes gains in the parliamentary election, it will come at the expense of the others. There are even doubts about whether they could forge an alliance. Torn apart by personal ambition and ideological differences, they are unable to unite behind a single presidential ticket that could challenge the secular-nationalist bloc. |