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.