PKS / Partai Keadilan Sejahtera / Justice and Welfare Party. Initially this party
was established as the Justice Party. While formally established on 9 August.
PK / Partai Keadilan / Justice Party PKS / Partai Keadilan Sejahtera / Justice and Welfare Party Initially this party was established as the Justice Party. While formally established on 9 August 1998 in the giddy months following the resignation of President Soeharto and the subsequent opening of the “democratic space” to use the expression of then President Habibie, the origins of this party may be found in the networks of conservative Muslim students that begin to emerge from the 1980s. Following the 1999 elections and the failure of this party to secure the minimum levels of votes required to contest subsequent elections under its old its name, the party renamed itself the Justice and Welfare Party (PKS). The success of this renamed party in the 2004 elections means it will retain its new name into the future elections including 2009. Because the renamed party is for all intents and purposes certainly politically and electorally, just a continuation of the previous party, the use of the term PKS below refers to the whole history of this party since 1998. Unlike other overtly Islamist parties in Indonesian history, this party has not adopted the Jakarta Charter as part of its political platform. In some respects this may be due to two factors. The first is that as a party of mostly younger generation activists the struggles over the Jakarta Charter seem as debates of a by-gone era with little substantive relevance to the challenges of the existing era. A second and perhaps more substantive reason is that this party has always seen itself playing two roles in society, namely one of political and electoral engagement, and secondly (and extremely rare for an Indonesian political party) being one of propagation of a vision for the citizenry within society. In the 1999 elections the party secured approximately 1.4% of the popular vote, making it the 7th largest party in the country. The party’s strongest support came from Jakarta (4.9%) followed by West Sumatra (2.9%), Bengkulu (2.6%) and West Java (2.3%). The results in West Java, however were concentrated in the urban areas bordering Jakarta (Depok, Bogor, Bekasi and Tangerang). While the party demonstrated a strong urban base to its vote, it did produce very credible results in counties (kabupaten) as disparate as Pidie in Aceh (5.2%), Hulu Sungai Tengah in South Kalimantan (4.4%) and Tanah Datar in West Sumatra (4.0%). In general the party was unsuccessful in penetrating the key demographic regions of central to eastern Java. The elections of 2004 produced a very solid boost for the party’s raising its vote from 1.4% in 1999 to 7.3%. In general there was a solid rise in support for the party across the Muslim majority regions of the country with the notable exceptions of regions of central to eastern Java. In general this rising tide of support followed patterns set in the 1999 elections. For example the party’s best results were again found in the region of Jakarta where it emerged as the largest party (23% - this figure excludes expatriate Indonesian voters) with the urban regions bordering
Jakarta again producing support beyond 20%. In 2004, however, the party also enjoyed a huge boost of support in many of the provincial capitals actually emerging as the largest party in a number of them notably in northern Sumatra, such as Banda Aceh in Aceh (31.7%), Medan in North Sumatra (17%) and Padang in West Sumatra (21.6%). Additionally the party grew its vote to become the second largest party in Pidie in Aceh (10.7%) with a better result next door in Aceh Besar (16.7%), while the vote in Hulu Sungai Tengah in South Kalimantan grew to 21.4% making PKS the largest party in that region with a better result in the neighbouring county of Hulu Sungai Selatan (31.3%), again making PKS the largest party. The party also topped the polling in the new North Maluku region of South Halmahera with 21.2% of the vote. In the Presidential elections of 2004, the party, after considerable internal debate, finally came out in support of Prof Amien Rais in the first round. When his candidacy failed to progress to the second, the party was able very quickly to endorse Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as their preferred candidate to the second round.
