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.