Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia

MANAGING POLITICS AND ISLAM IN INDONESIA 221who had originally entered Golkar to defend Akbar’s candidacy for party chairagainst Edi Sudradjat’s ‘nationalist’ group, backed Habibie against Akbar for thepresidential stakes. Sasono and ICMI supported the unsuccessful candidacy ofHabibie’s adviser, Marwah Daud Ibrahim, for chair of Golkar’s parliamentaryfaction against the final victor, Marzuki Darusman. Members of Akbar andMarzuki’s team retaliated by calling on Sasono to resign from Golkar forrefusing to campaign in the general elections for the party. 11 Sasono respondedby insisting that he decided not to campaign for Golkar because, as Minister of Cooperates,he would be accused of using government facilities to buy votes.However, by this stage Sasono had been isolated within Golkar by Akbar’sfaction.Following this, there were signs that the Minister of Co-operatives waspreparing an alternative vehicle to that of Golkar and ICMI with which to realisehis political ambitions. Sasono was widely viewed as the man responsible forlaunching the new People’s Sovereignty Party (PDR), whose leaders were knownprotégés and confidants of Sasono from the ICMI think-tank, CIDES, theBandung Institute of Technology (where Sasono received his engineeringdegree) and the co-operatives department. Although Sasono denied any linkswith the party, analysts conjectured that the party would become an alternativepolitical vehicle to Golkar for the Minister, and possibly for President Habibieshould Golkar prove an insufficient political machine. The East Java chapter ofPDR strengthened such speculation when it announced that Habibie and Sasonowere its choice of ‘national leaders’. 12There were signs that support for Habibie and Golkar might disintegrate evenfurther, as the ICMI membership increasingly was split between support forGolkar and support for the new, mostly Islamic, parties such as PPP, PBB, PKU,and the more nationalist-oriented PAN. Although the Muslim parties initiallyconsidered forming a coalition with Golkar and supporting Habibie, many partyleaders eventually withdrew their support and sought a separate ‘Islamic’alliance. 13This fracturing of support for Habibie within ICMI and Golkar reflected anatural progression as the new Islamic parties offered more autonomous vehiclesthrough which competing politicians could pursue their political aspirations andagendas. This splintering of support occurred during a pre-election phase thatwas in extreme flux, as different party leaders manoeuvred into a series ofshifting ‘potential’ alliances of contending parties in anticipation of forming agoverning coalition. At one stage, there was speculation that Golkar might forman alliance with PDI-P and PKB. This sparked retaliations from Muslimmodernists, who then sought to establish a rival coalition of Islamic parties,which most likely would include Amien Rais’s PAN, and threatened to withdrawtheir support from Habibie. 14In summary, there was a progressive slippage of support for Golkar, on theone hand, and Habibie, on the other, as competing factional interests entered intogeneral election mode and fiercely contested the presidential stakes. This