Given the great flux in Indonesian politics, there is much that
remains uncertain. Nonetheless, the broad outlines of what are likely
to be the major political groupings in post-Suharto Indonesia are
emerging. Four such groupings stand out. The first is modernist
Islam, which has as its institutional focus the Muhammadiyah--a large
and sprawling social welfare organization, estimated to have some
twenty-eight million members. Its core base of support is among civil
servants, professionals, and traders in urban centers. Politically,
it stretches from hard-core puritan groups such as Dewan Dakwah,
through pragmatists such as its current leader, Amien Rais, and the
country's new president, Habibie, and on to liberal-leaning Islamic
intellectuals like Nurcholish Madjid.

A second distinct political constituency is traditional Islam
centering on the Nahdatul Ulama (NU). The NU is a large social and
education movement (with an estimated thirty million supporters)
built around traditional religious teachers. Where supporters of
Muhammadiyah tend to be urban-based and better educated, the
traditional stronghold of the NU has been in rural villages,
particularly in East Java. Where the modernist wing of Indonesian
Islam emphasizes piety, puritanism, and in the past was associated
strongly with the push for an Islamic state, the traditional wing,
especially under the leadership of the NU's wily Abdurahman Wahid,
has emphasized tolerance, inclusion, and preservation of the status
quo.

A third major political grouping is likely to be built around what
might be termed secular nationalists. As with the two Islamic
political clusters, this one has roots in the pre-Suharto era.
Secular nationalism was the political vein tapped by Sukarno in the
1940s and 1950s, and today it is embodied in the leadership of his
daughter, the opposition political figure Megawati Sukarnoputri. As
with the two large Islamic political clusters, the party vehicle for
Megawati to pursue this constituency remains to be determined. One
possibility, widely mooted among liberals in Indonesia, is that
Megawati might join forces with Abdurahman Wahid of the NU in a
"Rainbow Coalition."

The final large constituency in the political life of the new
Indonesia is likely to center on the former state political party,
golkar. It has been widely discredited in the wake of Suharto's fall
and has been deserted by a number of its component parts. The armed
forces leadership has declared publicly that it will draw back from
golkar and no longer bias the political environment in its favor. In
spite of these setbacks, a number of professional politicians who are
mostly secular Muslims with pro-reform orientations have been willing
to work with and through Habibie in order to gain control of golkar
and turn it to their purposes. The most prominent figure in this
group is Akbar Tandjung, the new chairman of golkar, who also
occupies the powerful position of state secretary in Habibie's
cabinet. Although laboring under heavy stigma as a creature of the
Suharto regime, golkar has a number of factors in its favor. First,
its members currently constitute a majority in both the House of
Representatives and the Peoples' Consultative Assembly. Second, it
has a well-developed party structure reaching down to the provincial,
district, and village levels. Third, it will probably benefit
financially from both the state enterprise sector and the many
frightened Chinese Indonesian business people who have nowhere else
to turn.

There are likely to be other political parties representing smaller
constituencies such as radical Islamic groups, Christians, and labor.
Critical to the fortunes of both major and aspiring minor political
parties--and, more broadly, to the prospects of democratic politics
in Indonesia--will be the political rules currently being drafted as
part of the process of political reform promised by Habibie. To have
any chance of success, the new institutional framework will need to
satisfy three fundamental political needs.

First, it will need to respond effectively to the clear public
rejection of the old authoritarian regime by providing for real
checks on the presidency, greater accountability, and better
representation. Second, however, it will need to satisfy the core
interests of the military, which, although long in the shadow of
Suharto, remains the most potent political force in Indonesia by a
very long margin. The military leadership will want to see caution in
the reform process, so that neither national stability nor its own
political interests are jeopardized. In particular, it will want to
ensure its own continued involvement in the governing of the country.
Third, the new framework will also need to satisfy the interests of
key politicians: Habibie and the golkar leadership, Amien Rais,
Abdurahman Wahid, and Megawati Sukarnoputri. All will want a system
favorable to large parties. golkar will be critical, for it still
dominates the House and the Assembly and will thus control the
approval of the new rules. However, if the three principal non-golkar
political leaders were united in opposing any proposed new framework,
it would probably be stillborn.

As of mid-August, a remarkable level of tacit consensus seems to have
evolved. Two official political reform working parties (one under the
Interior Ministry, the other under the Justice Ministry) appear to
have converged around a peculiar hybrid framework. The power of the
presidency is to be circumscribed by a two-term limit and, more
importantly, by enabling the legislature to function as a real
institutional check by virtue of freeing the political parties from
the various shackles imposed on them under the New Order. The
electoral system will feature both single member districts decided on
a plurality basis and nationwide seats decided on a proportional
representation (pr) basis, but with a heavy weighting toward the
former. If elections are indeed free, the tendency should be toward a
few large parties dominating the legislature, though the small number
of pr seats seems designed to provide some representation for
minority constituencies. Under the mooted framework, the armed forces
will be guaranteed 50 seats in the 500-seat legislature (down from 75
under the old system).

If the reform framework that goes to the Peoples' Assembly in
November does indeed remain in this form, it will satisfy the three
political requirements set out above. But its viability as an
operational framework for government is another question entirely.
While it seems likely that it would avoid producing the hopelessly
fractionalized and extremely volatile multi-party politics that
Indonesia experienced in the mid-1950s, there would still be real
scope for division and logjams. Given that it seems unlikely that any
one party will control the House, the legislative bargaining process
between it and the president is likely to be difficult. Further
complicating the situation is the fact that it appears the House may
well have a real ability to vote the president out of office at any
time (by virtue of its dominance of the Peoples' Assembly). Indeed,
and labels notwithstanding, this system may function rather like the
messy parliamentary framework Thailand had in place until very
recently.

Assuming the military does not intervene in party politics, the
machinery of government in Indonesia is going to operate in a manner
very different from the past. There are likely to be both benefits
and costs. On the positive side of the ledger, the political system
will be more accountable and representative, as the president will
now have to share power to a much greater extent with local
representatives of the people. On the negative side, at least in the
short term, this may promote political corruption and severely
complicate the task of putting in place the sorts of major economic
measures needed to restore investor confidence and rebuild the
economy.

Before turning to the economic tasks that lie ahead, it is worth
pausing to reflect on the increasingly Islamic character of politics
in Indonesia as this may well generate misunderstanding in the United
States. The Islamization of Indonesian politics is not just a
function of B.J. Habibie being the country's first truly Muslim
president, or of his key allies (such as the new golkar chairman,
Akbar Tandjung) also being committed Muslims, or of the fact that two
of the three key "opposition" political leaders (Amien Rais and
Abdurahman Wahid) also head very large Islamic social movements. This
phenomenon runs much deeper. As scholars who study Islam in Indonesia
have pointed out, the Islamization of Indonesian politics took hold
roughly a decade ago. Under the controlled political environment of
the New Order, this primarily manifested itself as a social trend
toward increasing piety and calls for higher standards of public
morality. But what will Islamization mean in the more open political
environment that is now evolving?

The answer to this question goes back to the spectrum of Islamic
thinking in Indonesia and the range of socio-religious currents
contained within it. It is certainly true, for instance, that there
are radical Islamic groups such as the Indonesian Institute for the
Islamic World Solidarity (KISDI) and Dewan Dakwah that are associated
with positions that would worry American elites: religious
intolerance, an Islamic state for Indonesia, hostility toward the
United States (and international institutions seen to be dominated by
the United States), and hostility toward Israel. But these groups are
no more representative of the political thinking of mainstream
Muslims in Indonesia than are the hardest-edged groups on the
religious right representative of the political thought of mainstream
Christians in America. In short, radical Islam is but one segment
(and a relatively small one at that) in a broad spectrum.

There is no clear consensus as to what an Islamic policy agenda for government (as distinct from one for opposition) should look like. Nevertheless, and at the risk of oversimplification, while there are major differences between Islamic leaders such as Amien Rais and Abdurahman Wahid, the reality is that neither favors an Islamic state, neither believes in Islamic banking or Islamic economics, and both (whether through conviction or political survival instincts) are working toward a more rather than less inclusive approach to religious diversity. And while there is clearly widespread popular resentment against Chinese Indonesians, both leaders have called for tolerance and understanding and have decried the awful violence directed against them during the riots. Though Amien Rais might flirt with the rhetoric of large-scale economic affirmative action along the lines of Malaysia's New Economic Policy to redress economic imbalances between indigenous Indonesians and Chinese Indonesians, the very different demographic realities of the two countries will ensure that this is never more than a marginal undertaking in Indonesia. In short, while the rhetoric and symbols emanating from Indonesian politics are likely to become increasingly Islamic, the tendency to view this is as inevitably a malign development should be resisted. Compared with many other parts of the Muslim world, the broad mainstream of Indonesian Islam is remarkably tolerant and progressive. It should be nurtured rather than feared and isolated.

Essay Types: Essay