The Failure of Islamic Populism in Indonesia’s 2019 Election

Abstract

This paper attempts to discuss the failure of Islamic populism in Indonesia. In the 2019 general election, populist jargons departing from Islamic teachings was used in the campaign to win the election. Islamic populist jargons are generally interpreted as an effort to voice the pure voice of the people, called the ummah, to fight a tyrannical regime which is sometimes also considered secular, corrupt and anti-Islamic. These jargons are mainly used by supporters of the opposition candidate Prabowo Subianto to defeat the incumbent President Joko Widodo. From the results of the General Election, the influence of Islamic populism, however, is very limited. In this paper, we argue that the failure of Islamic populism is due to three things, first, the support for the democratic process is still quite strong. Secondly, Islamic populism used by the Prabowo group is not part of mainstream Islam in Indonesia. Thirdly, in a long historical context, Islamic populism is always contestable in Indonesian politics so that its influence in politics is always debatable. To discuss this issue, this paper traces various campaign themes of the two Presidential candidates in various media and uses of statistical data from a national survey institution.