Indonesian leader's running mate
Islamic cleric has neutralized an extremist threat to his campaign, though
critics say to the detriment of issues more crucial to voters
By JOHN
MCBETH | Asia Times
To no one’s surprise,
conservative cleric Ma’ruf Amin, the 75-year-old running mate forced on
President Joko Widodo at the nomination deadline, is proving to be little more
than a passenger as Indonesia edges toward simultaneous legislative and
presidential elections in April.
Amin is likely to be even more so
if Widodo is re-elected, although minorities fret over what influence he might
try to bring to bear on such issues as the potentially disastrous Halal Bill –
or worse, if something ever happens to a seemingly healthy president.
In the end, analysts may argue
that although Amin won’t likely win Widodo any more votes, he at least has
arrested a threatened deterioration in support among the conservative Islamic
community, which drove the president to seek a running mate with religious
credentials in the first place.
For some, Amin has already served
his purpose by dividing the so-called 212 Movement, the conservative coalition
which brought down Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Purnama in early 2017 and
which had set its extremist sights on Widodo as well.
Amin helped found the protest
movement, then saying its job was done after Purnama was jailed for blasphemy,
he walked away. He now claims to regret sending the popular governor to prison,
explaining in self-serving piety that the law was simply following its course.
For all that, the 212 Movement
already appeared to be disintegrating, initially losing hardline Islamic
Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab, who fled into self-exile in Saudi
Arabia in mid-2017 to avoid criminal charges he claimed were politically-inspired.
Even spokesman Kapitra Ampera,
once an attorney for Shihab and also Tommy Suharto, ex-president Suharto’s
youngest son, has left to become a parliamentary candidate for Widodo’s ruling
Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) in the southern Sumatran
province in Riau.
Azyumardi Azra, head of the
graduate school at Indonesia’s State Islamic University, asserts that 212 –
named after a mass anti-Purnama rally in Jakarta on December 2, 2016 – was more
a political movement than a religious one and was always destined to drift
apart.
For all the concerns at the time,
it was difficult to see how the factors that conspired to drag down an ethnic
Chinese Christian governor in the cauldron of the country’s biggest city could
be replicated across a much wider national stage.
As the former president of
Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s and the world’s largest Muslim organization, and
also the serving chairman of the influential Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI),
the nation’s top clerical body, Amin may have unmatched religious credentials.
But the son of a little-known
west Java religious scholar has seen his career shaped as much by his prowess
as an Islamic politician as by his expertise in Islamic law. With that has come
a deft ability to shift with the political winds.
Bringing together disparate
Islamic groups and parties earned Amin a local leadership role in NU, which now
boasts 45 million card-carrying members, and eventually a seat in the Jakarta
provincial assembly in 1971,
a position he held for the next 11 years.
The strongman Suharto regime
removed him as a prospective national candidate for the United Development
Party (PPP), the party NU was forced to amalgamate with in 1973, and it was not
until the long-serving president’s fall in 1998 that Amin returned to practical
politics.
Amin won a seat for NU’s newly
formed National Awakening Party (PKB) in the first post-Suharto democratic
elections in 1999, but he quit parliament in 2004 after a falling out with
pluralist ex-president Abdurrahman Wahid, a descendent of one of NU’s founders.
Azra calls Amin an opportunist
who, as an adviser to ex-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was responsible
for pushing a succession of edicts and policies that led to an alarming slide
in Indonesia’s reputation for religious tolerance between 2008 and 2014.
Indonesians are intrigued how the
man who habitually wears sandals and sarongs will tackle economic and other
worldly matters in planned televised debates with millennial tycoon Sandiaga
Uno, opposition candidate Prabowo Subianto’s running mate.
Certainly, he will be a
persuasive voice against campaigners seeking to cast Widodo as un-Islamic and a
closet communist, but most polls show he has had little overall impact on
Widodo’s popularity, which remains above 50% compared with Prabowo’s 28-29% in
opinion polls.
Indeed, in one recent survey
Widodo actually loses 1.5% with Amin on board, while among younger voters the
gap is 8-10%. But that belies other political realities, particularly in the
two bastions of Islamic conservatism – Banten and neighboring West Java,
Indonesia’s most populous province.
Widodo lost heavily there in
2014, two of five provinces where rival Prabowo emerged triumphant. In Banten,
Amin’s home province, Widodo currently trails 58.7% to 39% and may slip even
further depending on his response to the recent Krakatau tsunami disaster.
But Amin is little known in
Banten’s staid Islamic community. He left there with his parents at an early
age to study at the influential Tebuiring boarding school in Jombang, East
Java, which was established by NU founder Hasyim Asy’ari in the late 1890s.
In the main battleground of West
Java, where the president is determined to win, different political factors,
including the support this time of the second-ranked Golkar Party and also
reformist provincial governor Ridwan Kamil, a Widodo ally, give the incumbent a
narrow lead.
Widodo began courting Amin soon
after the Purnama affair wound down, but he did not consider him as a running
mate until his allies in the ruling coalition rejected his preferred choice,
former Constitutional Court chief justice Mohammad Mahfud MD, who they feared
had political ambitions of his own.
Leading that revolt were PDI-P
leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, who sees her daughter, human development
coordinating minister Puan Maharani, 45, as a prospective candidate in 2024,
and ambitious PKB chairman Muhaimin Iskander, 52, deputy head of the People’s Consultative
Assembly (MPR).
Ironically, while Prabowo has so
far steered clear of primordial issues, perhaps in part because of the money he
needs from the ethnic Chinese business community for his cash-strapped
campaign, it is the Widodo government which has taken the offensive.
During a national meeting last
November, the Indonesian Mosque Council (IMC), headed for a second five-year
term by Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, issued an edict that the country’s 800,000
mosques should not be used for political activities.
While Azra doubts its ability to
enforce the directive, it is a clear effort to stop places of worship from
becoming points of opposition mobilization, as they were during the
anti-Purnama campaign when Kalla, ironically enough and to Widodo’s chagrin,
supported winning candidate Anies Baswedan.
Although it attracted little
media attention when he was appointed early last year, IMC’s panel of experts
includes State Intelligence Agency (BIN) director Budi Gunawan, a member of
Megawati’s inner circle since he served as her police adjutant.
BIN issued a report at the time
of the November meeting warning that 41 mosques in one Jakarta neighborhood
alone were preaching extremism and religious intolerance to worshippers, many
of whom were government workers.
More recently, PKB – one of the
six parties making up the government coalition – expressed support for a
suggestion from doctrinaire Acehnese clerics for the presidential candidates to
undergo a Koranic recitation test, which Prabowo might struggle with as the
only Muslim in a family of Christians.
What worries critics is that the
preoccupation with religion ignores the fact that elections should be fought on
issues that affect the everyday life of Indonesians, who still pay more for
rice than any other Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) citizen and
have now been told that their tsunami warning system has fallen into disrepair.
Amin seems to encapsulate all
that, a prospective vice-president whose real-world experience is confined to
Islamic banking and little else. Azra said: “People are worried not only
about his health [he has heart problems and tires easily], but his lack of
expertise in anything outside religion.”
-- Photo: Indonesian President
Joko Widodo prays during Nuzulul Quran event at Presidential Merdeka Palace in
Jakarta, Indonesia on June 5, 2018. Photo: NurPhoto via AFP Forum
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