SBY politics

The choice of Boediono as vice presidential candidate on the SBY ticket could awaken middle-class moderates to the fact that they are a real factor in the direction of the nation. The old conventional wisdom says that Golkar and PDIP are secular and pluralist and that PKS hold the banner of sectarian politics with PKB and PAN collecting the milder form of Islamism. The results of the parliamentary elections allay fears of fundamentalism as the secular parties outnumber the sectarian by a wide margin.

But there are other important issues which are more instrumental in efforts to improve the standard of living in Indonesia. Corruption, bureaucracy, human rights are clearly the prime enemies of the civil society. Yet at the emotional level where political gut instincts are formed, the specter of radical religion is far more ominous to the endemic disease of corruption. This hampers reform, because you almost have to choose between clean government and freedom from extremism.