By : R. William Liddle

Asian Survey, 40:1, pp. 32-42. ISSN: 0004-4687
(c) 2000 by The Regents of the University of California/Society.
All rights reserved. Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to:
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(Part 2)

Two other Parties with significant support were PBB (Partai Bulan Bintang, Star and Moon Party) and PK (Partei Keadilan, Justice Parly), which an 2% and 13 seats and 1% and 6 seats; respectively.3

The 1999 results .demonstrated broad continuity with the outcome of die 1955 election, when Indonesia was a parliamentary democracy with a cabinet government led by a prime minister and headed by a ceremonial president. PDI-P is chaired by Megawati Sukarnoputri, eldest daughter of Indonesia's founding father and first president Sukarno. The party's roots are in the pre-World War II PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia, Indonesian National Party) also founded by Sukarno. In 1955, PNI was the largest Party, attaining 22% of the vote. Its supporters were mostly Javanese syncretists (formal Muslims whose actual religious beliefs and practices are heavily influenced by Hinduism and indigenous animism), but the Party also won widespread backing among ideological nationalists, non-Muslims, and ethnic minorities throughout the archipelago.

Under President Soeharto's military authoritarian New Order government, PNI was forced to fuse with smaller nationalist and Christian Parties to form PDI. PDI-P, the "Struggle" faction of PDI, broke away from government control at the end of the Soeharto period. It is now by far the largest Party, claiming nationalist and nonreligious political tradition. Ist base is similar to that of the old PNI, most solid among Javanese syncretists but significant wherever there are strong pro-nationalist und anti-Islamic sentiments.

Golkar did not exist in 1955. Created in 1964 by the armed forces und used for 30 years by Soeharto to create the impression of democracy, the party won more than 60% of the vote in each of six heavily managed elections between 1971 und 1997. In 1999, Golkar's leadership, still rooted in the bureaucracy und armed forces, was divided between factions supporting und opposing the incumbent president, B. J. Habibie, who had sueceeded to that Office from the vice-presidency when his Patron, President Soeharto, stepped down. in May 1998. Golkar's relative success surprised observers, most of whom had predicted that the party would collapse totally. Ist votes came disproportionately from the non-Java Outer Islands, where the party's leadership, rooted in local ethnic und religious communities (Habibie, for example, was a hero in his native Sulawesi). as well as in the state apparatus, remained largeIy intact.

PKB, led by the charismatic muslim intellectual und long-time social democratic activist Abdurrahman Wahid, familiarly called Gus Dur, is formally the political expression of NU (NahdlatuI Ulama, The Awakening of Traditional Religious Teachers and Scholars), the nation's largest Islamic social and educational organization. NU represents Islamic traditionalism, whose followers adhere to the Syafi'i jurisprudential school-within Sunni Islam. It is strongest in East und central Java. NU was once a political party and won 18% of the vote. in 1955, Under Soeharto, it was forced to join PPP, an artificial fusion of all existing Islamic parties. In the mid-1980s, NU withdrew from Partisan Politics, returning as PKB only after the fall of Soeharto.

In 1999, PKB divided the traditionalist vote with PPP, many of whose leaders at both the national und Iocal levels are affiliated with NU but who decided to remain in PPP rather than join PKB. The other significant group of PPP leaders is Muslim modernists, who reject all of the Sunni jurisprudential schools in favor of direct interpretation by the faithful of the Qur'an und Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Muharnmad). In the 1955 election, Masyumi (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims), the principal Party of modernists, was the second largest Party with 21% of the vote. It was particularly strong in the Outer Islands, where modernists tend to predominate. Masyumi was subsequently banned by President Sukarno and only partially rehabilitated by Soeharto, who allowed some of its leaders to join PPP.

3. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, The 1999 Presidential Election, MPR General Session and Post-Election Developments in Indonesia (Washington, D.C.: National Democratic Institute, November 28, 1999), p. 39.

Part 3