An election banner for Anis Matta, head of the Indonesian Wave Party, with the presidential candidate and his deputy (Al Jazeera)
Jakarta -
He studied the Arabic language in Jakarta, but he mastered it in addition to the English language, and he quickly rose in the world of politics, until he became one of the most prominent symbols of the Islamic movement in Indonesia. In these elections, his new party, which was founded in 2019, is allied with the strong presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, and he may be the intellectual and political theorist of this alliance.
Al Jazeera Net interviewed Anis Matta, head of the Wave Party (Glora), about his vision of the political phenomenon in Indonesia, to simplify its understanding for the Arab reader, and what is related to it in these elections, which are expected to be the fiercest of the six electoral rounds that the country has experienced since the democratic transition in 1998 after the fall of the regime. Former President Haji Muhammad Suharto.
The following is the text of the interview:
Your party is running in the elections for the first time since its founding in 2019, and it has gone through a difficult period during the Corona pandemic for nearly two years. Do you feel that the party is ready to enter the elections and secure the election threshold (4% of the votes)?
Despite all the difficult circumstances that Indonesia and the whole world have gone through, we are able, God willing, to cross the electoral threshold, which means up to 6 million votes if the participation rate is about 80% of the total of 205 million citizens entitled to vote.
The conditions of the party at the beginning of the Corona pandemic were very difficult, and the process of establishing it had precise and very expensive conditions, due to the geographical breadth of Indonesia, as you need 9 hours by plane to move from the east of the country to the west. But despite all that, we are confident that we will overcome all obstacles to enter the next parliament.
Several parties with an Islamic nature, regardless of their references, participate in the elections and have weight in the street. Today, they are divided among the three candidates. What prevents them from uniting on common programs to run in the elections as a single bloc?
In order to understand this phenomenon, we need to understand a group of factors. In Indonesian political history, parties are divided into 3 ideologies: the right (Islamist), the center (nationalism), and the left (socialism), and there is a balance between these divisions at the street level.
Since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, 5 elections have been held in Indonesia, and this is the sixth. During these stages, political alliances were formed between these movements, but they are constantly changing alliances in every election season, because each of these forces understands that they need to ally with other forces to secure two-thirds of the elections. Street sounds.
Then, the severe polarization that Indonesia experienced in the elections of 2014 and 2019 constituted a threat to the country’s unity, especially with the presence of deep global geopolitical crises that increased the intensity of internal polarization.
The political elite was aware of the necessity of getting out of this polarization through cross-ideological alliances. We find that every presidential candidate in these elections has Islamic parties, nationalist parties, and leftist parties in his alliance.
Also, the secularization that was prevalent in Indonesia in the past has largely disappeared now, as there is a significant increase in religious awareness, or awareness of political Islam, to approximately 71% today compared to 20% at the beginning of the democratic transition, meaning that the people now accept that they are governed by religious values in The framework of national unity and the five foundations on which Indonesia was founded.
However, despite this, Islamic parties cannot secure the votes of religious voters, as there is a barrier between the masses who have religious awareness and the Islamic parties, because the phenomenon of religiosity exists in all parties, even nationalist and leftist ones.
Most Indonesian parties are parties of people rather than programs and ideologies, except for a few. With every election season, the map of party alliances witnesses a wide change, and the major parties constantly witness divisions. What is your explanation for this phenomenon?
Since the democratic transition in Indonesia, elections have been held not only at the presidential level, but also at the rural and village level. We have more than 90,000 elected positions, and elections by their nature produce leaders and symbols, and the role of symbols sometimes exceeds the role of organizations and parties.
We have a phenomenon that we call “political marketing,” in which leaders market themselves to the street directly or through the media and social media platforms. This highlights the phenomenon of personalities around which parties revolve.
Then, the events that the world is going through put ideologies of all kinds on the table for research and testing, which results in the phenomenon of changing ideas, or what appears as a split. Ideas and ideologies have ages, and what determines their age is the extent to which they suit reality and answer its questions.
Therefore, you find that the old and large Glukar Party split into several parties, and the Islamic parties also had divisions, as did the left as well. Like this party and others, the divisions revolved around individuals and not due to differences in visions and programs.
At first, we actually thought that the division was due to personal differences, but by taking a deep look at the phenomenon, in the case of the Golkar Party, for example, because it is the most divided party, we find that the question is the suitability of old ideas to face new challenges. We take the example of candidate Prabowo, who came from the center incubator and the Golkar Party before establishing his own party, due to a change in convictions and programs.
The same applies to the Ennahdha Party, which was founded by the head of the Ennahdha Movement and former president Abdel Rahman Wahid. We thought it was a generational difference, but its true roots are intellectual roots and intellectual development.
Presidential candidate Prabowo - with whom you are allied in these elections - made four attempts to win the presidency, but he did not succeed. In your opinion, what happened to make him succeed in the fifth attempt and become president of Indonesia?
I think that Prabowo is a phenomenon that needs to be read. He was a victim of the collapse of the Suharto regime and the democratic transformation in the country. He was dismissed from his job in the army, so he lived in Jordan for several years and then returned to the country and tried to run for candidacy through the Golkar Party, but he failed.
He then founded his party and ran once for vice president in 2009 and twice for president in 2014 and 2019, and failed in both. But he did not despair and ran in these elections because he is a business owner, so the defeats did not affect him, as he usually says.
Therefore, after losing the 2019 elections, he was able to overcome the defeat and accepted participation in Jokowi’s second government as Minister of Defense, but of course some of his supporters accused him of treason for accepting the ministerial portfolio, but he preferred unity and stability of the country over polarization and division.
But some view this step as out of concern for an important position such as Minister of Defense, rather than out of concern for national unity.
The truth is that anyone who understands the circumstances well realizes that this alliance took place before the Corona pandemic, and if the dispute had remained, the government could have fallen and the country would have entered a crisis. Therefore, you find that Indonesia has maintained an economic growth rate of around 5%, and this is a great achievement compared to other countries that have declined. Its economic growth reached zero or 1%.
One of the reasons for Indonesia's stability - in these difficult circumstances - was Prabowo's alliance with President Jokowi. Our support for him in the "Wave" party is based on the conviction that he is the most suitable man to rule Indonesia and preserve its unity and stability.
Your electoral alliance raises the slogan “Together towards a golden Indonesia in 2045.” What are the most prominent features of this vision and what will the country be like in 20 years?
At the beginning of the democratic transition, the national product in Indonesia was approximately 95 billion dollars, and after a quarter of a century of this transformation, the national product reaches 1 trillion and 400 billion dollars, and this is a significant growth. The "Golden Indonesia" project is a project marking a century since the country's independence.
In 2045, Indonesia will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence. The ambition that current President Jokowi is working on and that Prabowo believes in is that the national product in 2045 will reach approximately $9 trillion, so that the country will enter the list of the five largest economic countries.
If we look at these five countries, which are America, China, India, and Japan, in addition to Indonesia, perhaps with Russia, and 4 of them are located in Asia, this represents the transfer of economic power from the West to the East, which is called the Century of Asia.
There are 3 factors influencing it, which are technology, demographics and natural resources. China and India have the demographic factor, while America and Japan have technology. Indonesia has the conditions for demographics and natural resources, and the “Golden Indonesia” project focuses on enhancing technological strength to achieve this vision.
Instead of the five-year plan usually promoted by presidential candidates, Prabowo proposes in these elections a long twenty-year plan to achieve renaissance based on human development through the development of education, so that compulsory education becomes 16 years, not just 12. This, of course, requires a very large budget, but we believe it is possible. .
The government allocated a very large budget to manage the electoral process, estimated at 71 trillion rupees ($4.5 billion), while the budget for the last elections in 2019 was around $1.5 billion. Why this jump in election spending? If the elections go to a second round, there will be another large cost. What is the need for this large spending in light of the instability of the Indonesian economy, the citizen’s suffering from high prices, and the collapse of the rupiah?
One of the most important phenomena in our democratic experience is the high rate of participation in elections and the rate of observation of the electoral process. The rate of participation in elections always reaches 80%, and this is a high percentage. This will result in the fatigue of the electoral committees due to the volume of work, and this has an impact on the way elections are managed, and with the use of... The digital system in its administration increased the budget allocated for holding the elections in all its stages.
We see that the high budget for the elections is normal. The budget for the first elections after the democratic transition was only about $200 million. Look at how much the budget increased in the sixth elections, and at the same time you find clear economic development in line with it.
These elections are taking place in light of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and Indonesia witnessed the largest and most demonstrations in the Islamic world in support of Gaza, and the Palestinian issue was present in the election campaigns of all presidential candidates. What does the Palestinian issue represent for Indonesian diplomacy, and is Jakarta expected to move towards normalization with Israel as it did? Was it circulating in the media recently?
Of course, attempts at normalization between Israel and Indonesia are ongoing, but they are constitutionally rejected, and in order to understand where the Palestinian issue is in Indonesia, we must look at it from 3 aspects:
Firstly, this is a religious duty for the Indonesian people, whether for Muslims or non-Muslims.
Secondly, it is a humanitarian issue, and therefore non-Muslims participate in demonstrations in support of Palestine.
Thirdly, it is a constitutional trust. The constitution stipulates support for all movements for liberation from colonialism in all colonized countries, and there is no colonial state left in the world except Palestine.
That is why you find in Indonesia the right, left and center agreeing to support the Palestinian cause, so I am confident that the country will not normalize its relations with Israel. The political elite in the country is aware that the issue of Palestine is our issue.
Presidential candidate Prabowo made a striking statement last November that Indonesia should achieve balance in its foreign relations by opening more to China and India instead of the West. Can Indonesia achieve this balance in light of the intertwining of its relations with the West?
One of the most important things that distinguishes Prabowo Subianto as a presidential candidate is that he is the most aware of geopolitical crises, and is aware that the world is in a state of transition from a unipolar international system to a multipolar world, and if this world is still taking shape and its features are not yet clear, it is important for a large country like Indonesia to Maintains its neutral status in its relations with all international powers.
Indonesia has had a strong relationship with America since the mid-1960s, after the failure of the communist coups in the country and its accession to the capitalist system, and the democratic transformation at the end of the 1990s, but now there is an explosion at the core of the global system, and Indonesia takes a cautious stance towards this phenomenon.
Historically, Indonesia has been a victim of all major global transformations. For example, when the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe, it was a target for European colonialism, and when Japan entered World War II, we became a Japanese colony in 1942.
When Japan was defeated in 1945, Indonesia gained its independence. During the Cold War era, the bloodiest communist coups took place in the country in 1965. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, we entered the global democratic system.
The political elites have become aware and convinced that we must benefit from global transformations and not only be affected by them, by being neutral and independent in our international relations, in a way that serves the national interest as a priority above all else.
This is what Prabowo meant. China and India are our natural neighbors, and our economic relations with them are strong, and they will be, along with Indonesia and Japan, the major Asian countries within the five largest economies in the world.
But can Indonesia practically be neutral with the approaching major conflict between America and China on its borders in the South China Sea? Especially in light of its long association with the Western system?
The Founding Fathers have a famous term, which is “active neutrality,” meaning do not be passive neutral, but rather positive neutral, trying to win by using the crisis to turn into an opportunity for you.
Just as we said that we benefited from Japan's defeat in World War II and gained our independence, now we could have benefited from these major transformations in the world if we had known how to benefit from them.
The most important thing about the issue, from my point of view, is that Prabowo has this awareness of geopolitical transformations, and this is one of the most important things that compel us to support him as a presidential candidate.
Source: Al Jazeera