Indonesia Programme 2018 1. Political update 2017 has been a dynamic year for Indonesian politics. This is the third year in office of the current government and the politics of coalition has stabilized where the government received majority of support from parties in Parliament, a major shift from the 2014 – 2015 period and transitional year of 2016 where the coalition of opposition parties dominated the parliament. The next general elections will be held in 2019 where simultaneous national election of president, national parliament and local parliament will be held in the same day. The new system that will be adopted in 2019 will most probably give substantive impact on Indonesian politics at national and local levels.

An interesting phenomenon that emerged during 2017 local election year, and will most likely to become key issue to be debated, responded and used in political competition in the next round of elections, is the issue of religion-based extremism. The 2016 data of Wahid Institute and LSI study on Radical Religious Movements in Indonesia showed 11 million of Indonesians are willing to take part in radical activities while more than 500,000 people admitted that they have been involved in religiously inspired extremism activities. These findings were amplified in series of politically motivated but religiously inspired anti-Ahok (Ahok is the popular name of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama), the candidate for 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial elections, rally since November 2016 which involved millions of people from, not only Jakarta but also different parts of Indonesia and has resulted into the growing religious sentiments and tension throughout Indonesia. Eventually in the Jakarta election, the more popular Christian gubernatorial candidate, Ahok, and his moderate Muslim vice gubernatorial candidate, who had been known for their integrity and hard work lost the contest, Ahok was put in jail for his trial on blasphemy and Jakarta will have a new governor from mid-October 2017 who received massive support from Muslim voters where its main supporter is the firebrand clerics from Islamic Defender Group, a group who is known for its over-zealous religious activism that is so close to be grouped as religiously inspired extremism.

In response to the rising phenomenon of extremism that seems to be locally rooted, policy makers, including the young law makers in the national parliament, have been discussing it as part of their policy dialogue among themselves and with different stakeholders, including the civil society. They perceived the religiously inspired extremism as a national phenomenon that influences different spheres of life, including in politics where it has been used as political strategy for religious-leaning political parties to win political contests. In its part, the Indonesian civil society has been working a lot on educating the public on the danger of religious extremism and the law enforcement agency has set its own strategy to uphold the rule of law to prevent and combat religious extremism. However, these processes have not yielded tangible result due to, among others, first, there is disconnect between actors (political actor, civic actor and law enforcement actor) in responding to the issue. Each entity works along the line of its own space with limited intensive and collaborative interaction. Second, there is an absence of comprehensive/umbrella national strategy/policy for both state and none state actors to work together to combat extremism. Hence, there is the patchy response to the issue of extremism. Third, there is an issue of capacity among state and non-state actors, especially the young MPs, their politically recruited Expert Staff, policy advisory unit of the parties and the civic actors, in building up comprehensive argument and evidence-based policy proposals. Besides, the political oligarchy that dominates Indonesian political landscape contributes to the poor performance of young MPs to spearhead change in the parliament Political actors are defined as the combined main target group of the Strategic Partnership: - (representatives of) political parties - politicians - (Members of) Parliament and its Committees - Other elected representatives at local levels. NIMD will primarily focus on political parties.