Introduction

Asian Journal of Social Science 47 (2019) 301–308

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Introduction

Martin Ramstedt Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

The idea for this special issue on Islam and the Prospects of Pluralism in Indone- sia began to slowly form in late 2014, after the Indonesian Deputy Ambassador in Berlin, Dr. Siswo Pramono, had approached me with the proposal to join forces with him in organising three small academic roundtables in three different German cities, i.e., Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. Each roundtable was to focus on a different aspect of a common theme, i.e., the progress of democracy in Indonesia, with all participants reflecting back on the years of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidency, and trying to gauge the prospects for the legislature of Indonesia’s newly-elected President, Joko Widodo, aka Jokowi. Pramono made his proposal in view of the upcoming 2015 International Book Fair in Frankfurt, where Indonesia was guest of honour (Buchsteiner, 2015).1 However, he was not just motivated by the need to remedy the admit- tedly low awareness the German public generally has of Indonesian affairs. He was clearly also motivated by a desire for a critical inquiry into what was then still widely perceived as a success story—Indonesia’s supposed transformation into a truly democratic country. At the time, Jokowi’s election was seen by many international observers, scholars, journalists, and politicians as the very sign of Indonesia’s successful transition from Suharto’s autocratic, centralist, and bru- tally repressive “New Order” regime to a decentralised participatory democracy, in which “pluralism and respect of diversity” can co-exist with Islam and “the existential threat mandated through the perceived connection between reli- gion and ethnicity, which is an underlying cause of ethno-cultural conflict, can be set aside” (Bogais, 2015). Jonathan Bogais, at the time non-resident senior associate with the Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asian Studies at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., as well as adjunct associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the

1 See also Indonesia National Book Committee (2016) Indonesia to Be 2015 Guest of Honor at Frankfurt Book Fair. Available at: http://islandsofimagination.id/web/content/indonesia‑be ‑2015‑guest‑honor‑frankfurt‑book‑fair (accessed May 2019).

School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sidney, even went so far to blog that “Political Islam in Indonesia appears to have become less dom- inant in the face of the pluralism of the country’s civil politics, under which democratisation has gradually debunked political Islam’s more authoritarian attributes” (Bogais, 2015). It was, as we know, Jokowi’s persona just as much as his political programme that was providing for such hope and enthusiasm. Prior to his election as Presi- dent, Jokowi had served as Governor of Jakarta, “surprising the political elite with his astounding victory [against the previous governor, Dr. Fauzi Bowo] and the support he had gained from Jakarta’s masses and the middle class” (Vaswani, 2014). Jokowi’s victory over Bowo had been astounding, because Bowo, in contrast to Jokowi, has been part of Indonesia’s political and social elite by both birth and career. According to a Wikipedia entry2—the content of which was later corrobo- rated in personal exchange—, Bowo was born in Jakarta, into an East Javanese aristocratic and landowning family from Malang. He studied architecture at the University of Indonesia (Universitas Indonesia) in Jakarta from 1966 to 1967, where he joined the Indonesian Students’ Action Front (Kesatuan Aksi Maha- siswa Indonesia, KAMI), who supported Suharto’s purge of Communism among Indonesian students. In 1968, Bowo won a scholarship at the Technical Uni- versity in Braunschweig, Germany, where he graduated in 1976 to go back to Indonesia, where he became acting head of the Jakarta Regional Office. From 1982 to 1997, he also was treasurer of Suharto’s Golkar party.In 2000, he returned to Germany to obtain a doctoral degree from the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. In 2002, he became Deputy Governor of Jakarta, and in 2007 he was elected Governor. After his defeat by Jokowi, he became Indonesia’s Ambas- sador to Germany in Berlin from 2013 to 2017, where I met him on several formal and informal occasions. To understand what a feat it was for Jokowi to beat someone, like Bowo, it is helpful to read what Lizzy van Leeuwen wrote in her preface to the published version of her doctoral thesis, Lost in Mall: An Ethnography of Middle-Class Jakarta in the 1990s, which came out in 2011:

I am not really surprised to hear from friends in Jakarta that Aburizal Bakrie will be frontrunner in the next presidential election, due to be held in 2014. Bakrie is a notorious business tycoon and latter-day politician; he

2 See Wikipedia (n.d.) Fauzi Bowo. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauzi_Bowo (accessed May 2019).

Asian Journal of Social Science 47 (2019) 301–308