Calls made for revamping NU
Calls made for revamping NU
Blontank Poer/Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post/Cirebon
Hundreds of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) members ended a three-day
conference in Cirebon, West Java on Sunday, with several
recommendations including a changing of the guard in the nation's
largest Muslim organization.
NU should renew its vision in order for its central board to
focus on how to help improve the economic and social life of its
members at the grassroots level, they said.
"To achieve this goal, the current NU leadership should be
replaced. It's impossible to promote and implement such a vision
without changing the leadership," said NU scholar Ulil Absar
Abdalla, a senior participant at the meeting.
Other recommendations included a request for the NU central
executive board to refrain from political power struggles as was
displayed throughout the recently completed election period.
Ulil said the NU elite should instead shift from their
political orientation to address numerous grievances of the
organization's 40 million members throughout Indonesia, mostly
farmers and fishermen as well as other low-income people.
Many of the participants also demanded that NU executives
should be required to quit their posts in the organization, if
they chose to run for political office.
"It's important, so that the NU will no longer be used as a
political tool for power struggles, which have a divisive affect
on its members as experienced in the presidential elections,"
cleric Abdul A'la said separately.
These recommendations, Ulil said, must be taken into account
during an NU national leadership congress scheduled for Nov. 28-
Dec. 3 in Surakarta, Central Java.
"We will not file the recommendations in a written statement
to the NU central board. But I believe that they will be able to
accommodate members' grievances into an organizational policy in
the upcoming congress," Ulil told The Jakarta Post.
He said the involvement of elite NU members in practical
politics as shown in the vice presidential nomination of the
organization's chairman, Hasyim Muzadi, took away from efforts to
focus on and help improve the social and economic life of its
members.
"Because the grievances currently arising among NU members
have resulted from the NU central board's sloppiness, they should
therefore be held responsible and must address this issue," said
Ulil.
He asserted that the NU central board should enact a policy to
address the issue of poverty amongst the people with guidelines
to change that, so as not to leave its members a "group of the
weak".
Ulil, however, regretted the fact that NU lacked the
influential figures, who would be capable of dealing with the
grassroots' grievances in the November congress.
Former acting NU chairman Masdar Farid Mas'udi, who
temporarily replaced Hasyim while he was contesting the
presidential polls as the running mate of outgoing President
Megawati Soekarnoputri, hailed the recommendations made during
the Cirebon meeting.
"Political involvement by NU leaders has caused more troubles
to the organization. The result has been demoralization within
the NU," he argued.
Masdar said the NU leadership should accommodate these
recommendations to assist all of its 40 million members, so the
organization could be stronger and more respected in the future.
"Why do NU members often lose in competitions? It's because
the NU's mission to enhance the quality of its human resources
has been ignored by its leaders," he said.
The three-day conference was held at the Miftahul Muta'allimin
Islamic boarding school in Babakan village, Ciwaringin district,
Cirebon, and attended by 750 young activists, clerics and other
members of NU throughout the country.
It was organized modestly by NU's young intellectuals and
clerics not affiliated structurally with the organization. It
cost only around Rp 30 million (US$3,300) as the participants
paid their own expenses to attend.
Local NU members, including fishermen and students of 27
Islamic boarding schools in Ciwaringin, contributed rice,
vegetables and money to support the conference.