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 3)

In addition to the non-NU part of PPP, PAN, PBB, and PK (und also to some extent Golkar, whose leaders und voters include many Outer Island modernists) are all successors to Masyumi in that their principal base of electoral support is among modernist Muslims. Of the three largest religious groups in Indonesia - Muslims of syncretist, traditionalist, and modernist orientations - the latter are thus the most politically divided today compared to 1955. PAN is led by Amien Rais, who was the national chair through most of the 1990s of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's largest modernist-Muslim social und educational organization. Though supportèd at the grassroots mainly by Muhammadiyah members und other Muslim modernists, PAN at the national level is an explicitly nonreligious Party with a nationalist und populist agenda. Its leadership includes many prominent Christian und secular activists und intellectuals.

PBB und PK consciously attempt to represent the views of Islamic modernism. PBB is the political expression of the Indonesian Islamic Proselytizing Council (Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia), a nonpolitical private religious organization where many Masyumi stalwart worked in internal exile during the Soeharto years. PK is the voice of educated young modernists, strongest among university students and junior faculty at the major state universities. Like their Masyumi predecessor; all of the modernist Parties, including Golkar, have strong representation in the Outer Islands.

The Presidential Election

Under the Constitution of 1945, the president and vice-president are elected for a five-year term by the People's Consultative Assembly, a body comprising all.members of Parliament plus an unspecified number of "delegates from the regions and groups in accordance with regulations prescribed by statute."4 This Constitution, many of.whose provisions are.vague und easily manipulated by an authoritarian leader as adopted just after the August 1945 declaration of independence. It was replaced in 1950. by a parliamentary democratic constitution und forcibly reimposed in 1959 by President Sukarno, acting in concert with the armed forces. During the Soeharto years, the Assembly numbered 1,000 members, half from the 500-member. Parliament und half appointed offen careful screening for personal loyalty to the presidènt, to represent the 27 provinces und a wide variety of governmental, social, und political groups.

In 1999, President Habibie und the leaders of the armed forces und political Parties agreed that the presidential und vice-presidential-elections in the Assembly should be conducted democratically. The number of non-Parliament members of the Assembly was reduced from 500 to 200, with 135 representing the regions (five delegates for each of the 27 provinces) und 65 representing non-Partisan social groups, as stipulated in the Constitution. The regional delegates were to be selected by the newly elected provincial legislators, while the social groups would be chosen by the National Election Commission (on which all 48 political parties plus the government were represented). In a separate negotiation prior to the general election, the armed forces had agreed to reduce the size of their appointed delegation in Parliament from 75 to 38, which automatically increased the number of elected members from 425 to 462. With the departure of East Timor, the number of regional representatives dropped by five, for a final total Assembly membership of 695.

Despite the opportunities for abuse that these arrangements appeared to create, the presidential and vice-presidential electians were in fact conducted in a remarkably democratic fashion. Golkar partisans constituted nearly half the total number of regional delegates, but this was largely a refiection of Golkar's electoral successes in lightly populated Outer Island provinces and did not .delegitimize the Assembly process for most Indonesians.

4. Department of Information, Republic of Indonesia, The 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia (Jakarta: Department of Information, Republic of Indonesia, n.d.), Article 2.

Part 4