NU has its hands full of problems ...

NU has its hands full of problems ...

By Santi W.E. Soekanto

JAKARTA (JP): The largest Moslem organization Nahdlatul Ulama
(NU) will have a lot more to do in its coming national congress
than licking its wounds.

After its politicians suffered an embarrassing defeat in the
recent election of the Moslem-based United Development Party
(PPP), NU now faces frictions within itself, while having to
appease the concern of its confused followers who have had to
watch their leaders jostle one another for political positions.

There are still other, intertwined problems that the
organization has to contend with, including the allegedly
inefficient organizational structure and the poverty experienced
by many of its followers.

In its last congress in 1989, K.H. Achmad Siddiq, then chief
of the law-making board (Syuriah) warned that NU leaders should
watch where they were taking the organization.

"NU is not a taxi that can be ordered to go anywhere according
to the wish of its passengers, nor is it a suitcase which can be
filled with anything that the owner would like to fill it with,"
he said.

"Those who lead the organization, as well as the strategy of
the organization, may change, but not the track," added the
senior ulema, who died in January 1991.

Now, five years later, as the organization is preparing for
its congress next month in Tasikmalaya, West Java, many NU
followers may have started wondering where they have been heading
all this time.

As the jostling in the run-up and during the PPP congress
early this month indicated, the NU has been facing threats of
division within its own body. Observers, including Laode Ida from
the University of Hauoleo in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, pointed
out that NU's leading members are now split into three groups.

The first comprises those who want to stick to the 1984
"khittah", or vow, that NU will shun politics and concentrate on
becoming a purely socio-religious organization as it was when it
was founded. The second group comprises those who accept the vow
but want to remain politically active on an individual basis by
joining either one or the other of the existing political
groupings. The last group comprises those who refuse to accept
the khittah.

Charismatic NU chairman, Abdurrahman Wahid, may have to be
placed in a group of his own. He would not let NU name candidates
to run for political positions, then he gave signals that were
interpreted as meaning that he endorsed certain persons. He,
himself, can be described as a political activist as viewed from
his activities in the Forum Demokrasi group, which is highly
critical of the government.

Long before PPP held its congress, a number of NU leaders, who
were inclined to politics, had started preparations to wrest the
leadership of the party from the hands of the incumbent chairman,
Ismail Hasan Metareum, who hails from the Muslimin Indonesia
faction. They said that after years of standing on the sidelines,
it was time for the NU faction, which represents the largest
number of PPP members, to lead the party.

When pressed about their commitment to the khittah, these
senior NU leaders, including K.H. Cholil Bisri and K.H. Syansuri
Badawi, said they did not see any problem in reconciling their
political activities with the vow. "Life itself is politics,"
Bisri said.

NU has probably misread the cues of the government (which, in
line with existing laws, has control over the political life of
the nation and the activities of political groupings) as to how
much involvement in politics it can have at this time.

The increasingly cordial relationship between the government
and the Moslem community, as marked by officials' visits to
Moslem ulemas and their pesantren boarding schools, as well as
policies which benefit Moslem groups, has been translated by NU
as a sort of green light for its venturing further into politics.

The fact that President Soeharto himself inaugurated a
national congress of pesantren belonging to NU early this year
was apparently read as a blessing for their political
pretensions.

As political analyst Sudirman Tebba has observed, these NU
politicians then resorted to their age-old strategy, that being
the mobilization of influential ulemas or kyai, who manage the
pesantren. They held numerous, highly publicized meetings to draw
up plans and strategies on how to take the PPP baton.

Some of the respected and widely-obeyed NU politicians brushed
off the concern voiced by many people, including Moslem youths
from major cities, such as Jakarta and Surabaya, about what their
moves could do to the organization.

For instance, a younger kyai, upon hearing the youths' plan to
hold a protest in Rembang where the politicking kyai were holding
a meeting, said: "As if they would dare! This is not Jakarta ...
if a senior kyai tells his students to kick them out, what could
these young people do?"

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see at least two
mistakes that NU politicians have made in their maneuvering.
First, the highly-publicized meetings they conducted stirred up
too much controversy and created grievances among those who were
still loyal to the khittah.

The second blunder was their public request for an audience
with President Soeharto in order to, as many people believed, ask
for his blessing for their political moves, as well as for the
man they would pick to run for the PPP chairmanship.

Through Minister/State Secretary Moerdiono, President Soeharto
declined, citing his full schedule. In a political culture which
relies so much on one's ability to "read" gestures and cues, the
kyai from NU should have read more deeply into the rejection and,
at least, changed tactics.

They also should have read that the ongoing trend is that PPP
is to be kept in such a position that it will not grow big enough
to threaten the establishment, but also not become so small as to
upset the whole order of things as they are. NU, with its 35
million followers, is now too big and could cost the government
to high a political price. Clearly, so analysts, such as
Nurcholish Madjid, Maswadi Rauf and Syamsuddin Haris, have said,
the incumbent chairman of the time, Ismail Hasan Metareum, was
the only man who fit the bill because he enjoyed the government's
support.

There is still another development which needs to be monitored
since the NU candidate, Matori Abdul Djalil, lost his bid for the
PPP chairmanship. Some of the most respected senior ulemas
responded by threatening to abandon PPP altogether and join the
Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), or even establish a new party.
The last option, however, is quite unthinkable in the current
political situation.

PDI, certainly, welcomed the development, especially because
one of the ulemas who expressed his wish to join it was the
charismatic K.H. Alawy Muhammad from Sampang, Madura, known for
his daring criticism of the authorities.

The ulemas may have had their own understandable reasons for
abandoning PPP, but to many people who opposed them in the first
place, their statement sounded childish, or even like a case of
sour grapes.

Granted, nothing of the politicians' efforts was really
useless. Their maneuvering served purposes, including as an eye-
opener for many people as to how weakened are the existing
political parties' standings before the power holder, and how
even the ulemas' extensive charisma did not provide leverage
enough.

One of the impacts of the ulemas' maneuvers was to bring
attention to how much healing and peacemaking has to be done
among them in the coming congress. Observer Fachry Ali believes
there is still another problem to be handled immediately: the 34
million NU followers, who are now extremely confused.

Most of these followers had been reared in a tradition
respectful of their kyai. For some of them, even "to hear is to
obey". However, all this jockeying and maneuvering may have worn
them out.

These followers loyally followed their leaders when NU merged
with three other Moslem parties to form PPP in the 1970s. They
also followed when those leaders, feeling scorned after being
relegated to second position in the party in 1980s, abandoned the
party and vowed to shun politics.

The uncertainty reigning over the organization right now may
well present psychological problems which are not easy to
resolve.

The kyai also need to consider the growing culture of
intellectuality among its members, due to social changes and more
access to information. The fact that some Moslem youths dared to
question the kyai' move was an indication of a new development
that should be answered properly if NU wants to stay strong.