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Chapter 6. Population Studies and Political Behaviour: The Variables of Ethnicity and Religion
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6 Population Studies and Political Behaviour The Variables of Ethnicity and Religion 179 6.1 The Dichotomy of Indonesian Parties Indonesia is a society in transition, but retains many traditional features. Ethnicity and religion still play important roles in understanding Indonesian political behaviour. At the start it should be stated clearly that ethnicity and religion are not the only two independent variables to explain politics. Economic factors (including class affiliation and money politics), the patronage system, personality and party structure are also important. Nevertheless, to ignore ethnicity and religion will definitely lead to a serious lack of understanding of the Indonesian political situation. Our focus is to link ethnic information to Indonesian politics, in particular Indonesian elections. We hypothesize that there is a relatively high degree of “ethnic loyalty” and that Indonesian political parties are influenced by ethnicity. Let us first look at major and medium sized parties and their ethnic affiliations (see Table 6.1.1) so that we can then relate the electoral performance of these parties in the 1999 general election to the ethnic composition of the provinces. However, ethnic information alone is insufficient — religious background is also useful, if not crucial, for an analysis of Indonesian elections.© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore Reproduced from Indonesia’s Population: Ethnicity and Religion in a Changing Political Landscape, by Leo Suryadinata, Evi Nurvidya Arifin and Aris Ananta (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available from 180 INDONESIA’S POPULATION© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore From Table 6.1.1, it is clear that Indonesian parties are still divided along ethnic lines and the Java and Outer Islands dichotomy. The hypothesis here is that a party’s electoral performance is linked to ethnicity. However, as we do not have the actual ethnic composition of the voters in 1999, we therefore use the percentage of the ethnic composition of the total population in 2000 as the percentage of the ethnic composition of the voters in 1999. For example, 78.35% of the population in East Java is Javanese, as was the percentage of the voters in the 1999 election. Before the publication of the Results of the 2000 Population Census, it was generally known that Central and East Java were the homeland of the Javanese, hence Javanese-based parties such as the PDI-P and the PKB were likely to win in the general election in these provinces. But as West Java is a Sundaneseprovince, it is likely that a non-Javanese Islamic party such as the PPP might gain more votes than a Javanese party. Bali is the homeland of the Balinese; therefore a Javanese-linked pro-Balinese nationalist party such as the PDI-P is also likely to gain high votes. Generally, the 1999 election results in Java confirm this hypothesis. However, if there are two Javanese-dominated parties, political culture affiliation (e.g., nationalism and Islam) determines the choice of the Javanese voters.1 Let us look at the seats won by selected parties and the ethnic composition of those provinces (see Table 6.1.2). Table 6.1.2 illustrates that the PDI-P emerged as the largest party in Java and Bali. It won the largest number of seats in almost every province, including the special capital region of Jakarta. This coincided with the percentage of the ethnic Javanese population. TABLE 6.1.1 Major and Medium Parties and Their Ethnic Support Major/Medium Leader(s) Ethnic Support Partiesa PDI-P Megawati Javanese/Balinese Golkar Habibie/Akbar Tanjung Sumatrans/Buginese/ Makassarese PKB Gus Dur/Matori Javanese PPP Hamzah Haz Outer islanders PAN Amien Rais Outer islanders PBB Yusril Mahendra Outer islanders a See Appendix 6.1 for names of the political parties. [54.152.77.92] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:43 GMT) POPULATION STUDIES AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR 181© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore In the case of Jakarta, for instance, the PDI-P gained 7 seats (38.9%) out of 19 seats and the PKB won 1 seat (5.56%), although the percentage of the Javanese was only 35.16%. It seems that ethnic groups such as the Chinese and non-Muslims voted for the PDI-P. Other ethnic groups of Islamic persuasion might have voted for the PPP...