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PKS wants to represent interests of entire nation, says Anis
Established in 1998 by tarbiyah (education) activists, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) was once a rising star in Indonesian politics
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stablished in 1998 by tarbiyah (education) activists, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) was once a rising star in Indonesian politics. Securing 7.9 percent of the vote in the 2009 general election, the party overtook the 36-year-old United Development Party (PPP) as the country's biggest Islamic party and became a major ally in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration. Its image, however, has been tainted following the involvement of its chairman, Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq, in a graft case. Anis Matta, who took over the party's leadership from Luthfi in February last year, talked to The Jakarta Post's Hasyim Widhiarto about the party's future and discussed the party's reasons for declaring itself an inclusive party.
Question: You've been involved in the party's leadership since its establishment ' first as secretary-general and now as chairman. What do you see as the PKS' biggest achievement in the past 15 years?
Answer: We established the party with support from a small group of people. However, democracy and political freedom post reformasi have given us a supportive environment to grow in term of size. We spent the first 10 years mostly on developing organizational capacity and expanding. The results of this hardwork can be seen from the increasing number of our cadres.
In 1999, we only had around 30,000 cadres. The number quickly increased to 400,000 by 2004 and has kept on growing until today. The sizable growth of our support base has helped us extend our organizational reach. Our party has branches in all the country's provinces, regencies and municipalities, 70 percent of districts and 52 percent of subdistricts.
As a dakwah (Islamic propagation) party that claims to fight for justice and prosperity, is the PKS on the right track to achieve this vision?
Apart from focusing on organizational expansion, we've also been working hard to actualize, in stages, our organizational vision, especially our vision of Indonesia. We realized that for so long, Indonesian political parties have been trapped in so-called politik aliran (school politics ' the politicization of religious and cultural divisions).
From the beginning, the PKS has wanted to see the end of politik aliran, so that any ideological polarization would no longer prevent political parties from focusing on discussing state-related issues. This also explains why almost all Islam-based political parties in Indonesia have been struggling with a three-way tension, which involves Islam, modernity and the Indonesian
identity.
How do you convince minority groups who may feel threatened by the PKS' Islamic propagation
mission?
Other than politik aliran, there is no strong reason for the public to worry about our existence. Many issues relating to minority groups were successfully resolved under Gus Dur's [Abdurrahman Wahid] administration, in which we also played a part. So basically, there's no longer any sensitive issue relating to religion and ethnicity.
How does your dakwah mission go hand-in-hand with your recent campaign to become an inclusive party?
We'll definitely continue our campaign as an inclusive party as we want to ease the three-way political tension involving Islam, modernity and the Indonesian identity. The PKS wants to be a part of Indonesia and coexist with other groups.
The idea of inclusivity also shows the step-by-step development of the PKS. We want to say that we are not representing the interests of our group, or Islam, but Indonesia as an entire nation, with all its religious, ethnic and ideological diversity.
You made some bold moves after Luthfi's arrest, including asking your cadres to make a public apology. How effective has such a strategy been in restoring your party's image ahead of the general election?
We have obviously seen the negative influence of the graft case on our popularity. However, the damage-control strategy we have taken so far has helped us to ease almost all negative effects from the case.
It explains, for example, why we still managed to win major gubernatorial elections, like the ones in West Java and North Sumatra, and several mayoral and regental elections. Those victories strongly indicate we have now regained the public's trust.
Despite your well-structured cadre recruitment, some of your cadres were implicated in graft or criminal cases in the past few years. Do you plan to make some changes?
We continuously evaluate our cadre recruitment mechanism and make necessary adjustments every five years. We need to collect and evaluate enough data, including that relating to any legal and moral violations [committed by PKS cadres], before initiating a major change. But it's clear that the party will need some regular adjustments in many aspects.
What kind of presidential candidates does the PKS want to support in 2014?
We're looking for someone who can represent the interests of the new middle class, which has become the new majority in our demographic structure. They will be dominant in terms of shaping the future of our country. We have to look closer at this intergenerational transition. Whoever the president is, he or she must understand the discourses that emerge from this group.
