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National Awakening Party (PKB)

Founded by Abdurrahman Wahid in 1998 as the heir to the Nahdlatul Ulama political party from the 1950s, the National Awakening Party (PKB) is the most successful of the Muslim parties that have tried to draw on Nahdlatul Ulama’s vast organizational strength. Although formally Nahdlatul Ulama is not associated with any of these parties, it is the backbone of them all, including the PKB. Nonetheless, the PKB certainly does not have a monopoly on the political loyalties of Nahdlatul Ulama supporters, who are scattered among nearly all the major and some minor parties. Following the geographic pattern of Nahdlatul Ulama’s organizational depth and Wahid’s personal cachet, the PKB’s electoral strength is concentrated in Jawa Timur and Jawa Tengah.

The PKB does not support the rigid implementation of Islamic law and is an open party with support in parts of Indonesia with significant Christian populations, such as in Sulawesi Utara, Kalimantan Barat, and Papua. Because of Wahid’s personal control over the PKB, his and the party’s fortunes moved more or less in tandem. He used the PKB’s performance in the 1999 legislative elections (third-largest party with 12.6 percent of the vote and 51 DPR seats) as a springboard to build a coalition behind his successful presidential bid that year in the MPR voting. Wahid’s erratic administration reflected poorly on the PKB as well, and the party lost some of its public support, as well as access to patronage and the bully pulpit, when he was removed from office in July 2001. As a result, in 2004 the PKB lost two percentage points of its 1999 vote share, dropping to 10.6 percent in 2004.

Nonetheless, because all five of the major parties from 1999 lost support in 2004, the PKB retained the third-largest party share of the popular vote. After Wahid lost the presidency, the party began to splinter, and the 2004 election results caused a major split, with both pro- and anti-Wahid factions claiming the PKB’s mantle. At the outset of the new administration, the party took an independent stance vis-à-vis President Yudhoyono, sometimes supporting and sometimes opposing his policies. However, by 2007 the PKB had swung around much more solidly in support of the administration because of Yudhoyono’s success and Wahid’s complete loss of control over the party. As a result of party splintering, reduced support overall for Muslim and Islamist parties, and greater competition from secular nationalist parties, the PKB vote share was more than halved in 2009 to 4.9 percent (28 DPR seats).