Survey Indicates Broad Support for Islamic Coalition in 2014

Fuente: 
The Jakarta Globe
Fecha de publicación: 
24 Nov 2013

Indonesian voters appear to welcome the notion of an Islamic party coalition ahead of next year’s presidential election, a new survey found, despite some Islamic parties’ own reluctance to the proposal.

The National Survey Institute (LSN) said its latest poll found that 45.6 percent of respondents favored, in principle, a coalition of Islamic parties, while 23.7 percent disagreed. The remainder were undecided or had no opinion.  The survey was conducted from Oct. 20 through 30, from 1,240 eligible voters across Indonesia’s 34 provinces.

“Uniting the Islamic parties, though, is not easy,” LSN researcher Dipa Pradipta said while announcing the survey result in Jakarta on Sunday. “Group egos, which form the foundation of the Islamic parties, will likely serve as the main obstacle.”

He added it was not easy to form such a coalition because Islamic parties today were lacking influential figures able to unite them, such as the late Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, the founder of the National Awakening Party (PKB), and Amien Rais, who founded the National Mandate Party.

Gus Dur, who became Indonesia’s fourth president through a legislative election 1999 with the backing of an Islamic party coalition called the Central Axis, died in 2009; while Amien, initiator of the coalition, has kept a low political profile in recent years.

“Post the era of Gus Dur and Amien Rais, Muslims [in Indonesia] are losing unifying figures,” Dipa said. “Presently, there is no potential unifying figure for Islamic parties.”

The United Development Party (PPP) recently proposed the establishment of a new Islamic party coalition — dubbed the Central Axis Chapter II by some — but the PKB and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) have shown indifference to pooling their resources.

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