The Justice Party’s ideology, recent electoral wins, and chances of success for 2009 general and presidential elections.

PKS Ideology

Eep Saefullah, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia, says the PKS/Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, owes much of its recent electoral success to obfuscating its true nature as a radical Islamist movement inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

After they failed to achieve their [electoral] target in 1999, they made a big and important transformation in strategy.

It was a charade, he suggested: [1]

It’s obviously for the 2009 elections and it’s limited to the party’s surface.

While others might view this as simply pragmatic politics.

PKS Electoral Performance

The PKS, in another little winning streak, has won 91 out of 151 recent local and provincial elections, says its president Tifatul Sembiring, seven of them being governors’ elections, most notably in West Java and North Sumatra, and 84 being mayoral and regency elections. [2]

2009 Elections

Tifatul Sembiring says the PKS targets a 20% share of the 2009 vote, up from 7% in 2004. Having achieved this the party would feel confident about nominating its own candidate for president, possibly himself. [3]

Tifatul Sembiring

A political analyst from Universitas Paramadina, Bima Arya, however estimates that the PKS will win 10-12% of the vote in 2009, which would likely put it in fourth place on the party ladder, trailing Golkar, PDIP and Partai Demokrat, according to him. [4]

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Tags: Bima Arya, Eep Saefullah, Elections, Golkar, Islamist, Java, Justice Party, Muslim, Muslim Brotherhood, North Sumatra, Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PDIP, PKS, Political, Politics, Radical, Radicalism, Tifatul Sembiring, Universitas Paramadina, Universities, University of Indonesia, West Java