Alwi camp to go ahead with breakaway PKB congress
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Fears that the National Awakening Party (PKB) will split into two rival camps are likely to come true in the future, as chief welfare minister Alwi Shihab is determined to stage a breakaway congress aimed at reinstating his leadership.
Alwi was suspended as PKB chairman and Saifullah Yusuf as secretary-general by the party's central board last year after the two accepted ministerial posts in the Cabinet of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
A planned national meeting of the PKB will take place in Yogyakarta, Alwi said without specifying a date. His move received strong backing from influential clerics who helped establish the party in 1999.
"It will not be a breakaway conference but the legal one," Alwi was quoted as saying on Thursday by Antara. He added that representatives of all 33 provincial branches of the party would attend.
He insisted that the recent conference in Semarang, Central Java -- which elected his bitter rival Muhaimin Iskandar, a House of Representatives deputy speaker, as the new PKB executive chief -- was illegitimate as he, as the legitimate party leader, was not present.
The three-day congress, which ended on Tuesday morning, also retained former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid as the party's chief patron.
Also on Thursday, Alwi submitted a letter to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, requesting the government reject a new central board led by Muhaimin.
The letter was presented by Alwi's team of lawyers comprising Dodi S. Abdulkadir, Ariano Sitorus, M. Toni Suhartono and Ahmad Firdaus, and was received by administrative secretary at the ministry Said Imran.
The lawyers said the letter stated that the election of Muhaimin, a nephew of Gus Dur, was legally flawed because the congress did not involve Alwi and Saifullah as the party's legitimate leaders.
Earlier, a senior PKB politician who declined to be named said the justice ministry had decided to recognize only the PKB central board under the Alwi-Saifullah leadership.
"I reported this matter to Gus Dur but he did not respond to it positively," the politician said in a phone text message sent to allies of Saifullah, the current state minister for the development of disadvantaged regions.
A lack of government recognition means that a political party is not allowed to carry out or continue its activities, including participating in elections of executive chiefs.
The PKB was almost barred from taking part in last year's general election due to its unsettled leadership dispute between the Alwi camp and the rival faction led by then defense minister Matori Abdul Djalil.
A court eventually ruled in favor of the Alwi faction to allow the PKB to contest the elections, in which it came the fourth biggest party in terms of votes and the seventh in terms of seats in the House of Representatives.
In another attempt to challenge his suspension, Alwi filed a lawsuit with the South Jakarta District Court on April 11 against the PKB central board. Similarly, Saifullah has also taken legal steps against the party, according to his aide Yahya C. Staquf.
Gus Dur has repeatedly said the suspension of Alwi and Saifullah was decided in a plenary meeting of the PKB central board, which prohibited party executives from taking up government posts.
However, the party's statutes do not regulate whether its executives may hold dual positions or not.
The Alwi-Saifullah faction won crucial support from a group of senior clerics who similarly called the Semarang congress and its outcome illegitimate.
Influential cleric Abdullah Faqih, from the Langitan Islamic boarding school in Tuban regency, East Java, who leads the anti- Muhaimin group, issued a statement saying he would consistently stand behind the PKB central board under Alwi's leadership.
Copies of the statement were sent to all PKB clerics and leaders in East Java and Central Java, the party's two main strongholds.
In defiance of Gus Dur, the clerics support the Alwi-Saifullah faction's plan to stage a splinter PKB congress.