Gus Dur suffers ignominious defeat and more

John Mcbeth, The Straits Times/Asia News Network, Singapore

In the final decade of president Soeharto's rule, Abdurrahman Wahid emerged as a towering figure on the Indonesian stage, championing democratization, religious tolerance and moderation. But ill health and even democracy, when it finally came to Indonesia, have not been kind to the blind cleric, who later went on to parlay 15 years as head of the 40 million-strong Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) into an ill-fated presidency that left deep scars on Abdurrahman and his country.

The final blow came on Dec 1. In what may spell his end as a public figure of stature, the man best known as Gus Dur stumbled numbly from the NU Congress after the organization he had ruled for so long spurned his single-minded campaign to take charge of NU's powerful 11-man syuriah governing body -- and then handed his bitter rival, Hasyim Muzadi, a second five-year term as NU chairman.

Popular cleric Sahal Mahfudz, who also heads the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), was re-elected unanimously as the syuriah chairman after Abdurrahman was ousted in the first round of voting at the five-day congress in Solo, Central Java. Sahal's win meant the former president could not use the position to block the re-election of Hasyim, who had defied Abdurrahman by standing as running mate to failed incumbent Megawati Soekarnoputri in the presidential elections.

Muslim scholars say they doubt Abdurrahman will recover from what has been an immense blow to his influence and, perhaps more importantly, to his pride. 'This was such a massive win by both Sahal and Hasyim, no one can seriously argue it was purely the result of money politics,' said Australian National University's Greg Fealy, who wrote his PhD dissertation on the NU. 'Delegates were fearful of what Gus Dur might do if he won power again within the organization.'

Uncomfortable with the way the NU has been sucked deeper into politics since the onset of the so-called reformation era in 1998, congress delegates later voted to revoke a thinly disguised directive, issued before the 1999 general election, binding NU members to support the newly formed National Awakening Party (PKB). Although its base remains largely rooted in East Java, PKB came third in that election, behind Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) and the former ruling Golkar party.

In more recent years, Abdurrahman -- the party's chief patron -- has sown confusion in PKB ranks in his determination to unseat Hasyim, whose lackluster performance has not won him many admirers either. 'Everyone can see the utter mess that Wahid has made of the party, freezing or sacking branches, forcing out rivals and unilaterally overturning democratically made decisions,' said Fealy. 'The disillusionment with him, if not the outright exasperation at his behavior within his home constituency, is now exposed for all to see.' What remains to be seen now is whether the PKB board begins to show more resolve in opposing his arbitrary decision-making.

Abdurrahman has threatened to establish a splinter faction of NU, but even he seems to acknowledge he does not have the strength to go through with it. Hasyim's post-election call for unity has already borne fruit, with several senior pro- Abdurrahman clerics accepting his re-election and saying they will not support any moves to set up a breakaway organization. Still, damage has been done. 'This congress has diminished the spirit of our brotherhood,' Sahal declared at the end. 'I promise to consolidate support from all figures to settle this internal conflict.'

It has also diminished Abdurrahman, whose fall from grace can be traced to the onset of total blindness and two strokes he suffered before he outmaneuvered Megawati for the presidency in October 1999. The Asia Foundation's Indonesian director, Douglas Ramage, remembers him in his glory days, particularly on one night in 1992, when he publicly defended his ground-breaking visit to Israel. 'You saw the best of him then,' he recalled sadly. 'It was the way he took on his critics based on an issue of principle, the way he linked progressive interpretations of Islam with the imperatives of political secular democracy.'

Today, he is only a pale shadow of the visionary and intellectual who cut such an impressive figure in the 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps the most unappealing thing about him these days is his willingness to engage in demeaning political mudfights, demonstrating a mean-spirited and vindictive side for anyone he thinks has done him wrong.

The Dec. 1 congress seems to show the NU may have at last moved beyond Abdurrahman, a process that probably began with his impeachment as president in July 2001. However, much will depend on who Hasyim and Sahal choose for the 11-man syuriah and executive boards and whether they are prepared to usher in a new generation of officials, particularly from among the younger activists who sympathized with Abdurrahman's arguments that Hasyim had politicized the NU. That same charge could be leveled at the ex-president himself, of course, which only goes to show how difficult it will be to prise the organization away from politics. After all, a number of senior clerics are already lining up to contest next year's first round of direct elections of mayors and district chiefs.

Abdurrahman has always had his quirky side. Back in the early 1990s, he would startle interviewers by dropping a juicy, but hardly credible, piece of gossip into what up to then had been a perfectly logical discourse on the political issue of the day. That side of him bubbled more forcefully to the surface after his strokes -- as did his increasingly erratic behavior. That all culminated in his efforts to get the military to declare a state of emergency and freeze Parliament in February 2001, the final act that precipitated his humiliating impeachment five months later.

The former president's critics take no pleasure in his demise, saying he has missed an opportunity to become a guru negara, an elder statesman with the respect and authority to act as the nation's moral compass. But they are confident his legacy of pluralism and moderation will remain, a still-dependable bulwark against fundamentalism in the world's largest Muslim nation. It will live on through the Wahid Institute, opened just a few months ago with a mission to ensure interpretations of the Koran are left to the individual. And it will live on through the NU itself. In one of its final acts, the congress last week re- affirmed its opposition to all forms of extremism.