NU leader wants return to politics

NU leader wants return to politics

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's largest Moslem organization,
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), has found life without politics
irresistibly confusing, according to one of its senior leaders.

Syansuri Badawi, deputy chief of NU's lawmaking body, said
yesterday that returning to the jungle of politics would be high
on the organization's list of priorities at next month's congress
in the West Java town of Tasikmalaya.

"NU must drop its policy to shun practical politics because
it's confusing and largely muzzling ulemas," Syansuri said.

Formerly a powerful political party, the rural-based NU
decided in its 1984 congress to return to its original mission as
a socio-educational organization as its founding fathers intended
in 1926.

Syansuri said that although NU as an organization has stayed
away from politics, its policy of allowing members to join any of
the three political parties has put its leaders in an awkward
position.

"Islam without politics has turned out to be strange," said
the ulema who is also a member of the House of Representatives
(DPR) representing the United Development Party (PPP).

The ulemas' desire to return to politics was fanned by their
failure to clinch the PPP chairmanship, although NU is the
largest of the four organizations that make up the party.

Not rigid

Syansuri also reiterated many ulemas' determination to use the
upcoming congress to discuss a controversial plan to form a new
political organization in addition to the current three
recognized by the government.

He argued that although the law on political organizations
passed in 1985 allows for only PPP, Golkar and the Indonesian
Democratic Party (PDI), it could be amended.

"The law is not the holy Koran anyway. It's not that rigid,"
he said. "We will discuss the possibility."

The plan to establish a new political party was initiated by a
number of NU ulemas from East Java, just a few days after the PPP
congress dashed their hopes of clinching the party's leadership.

It has received a cool response from government officials and
pessimistic comments from observers. The latter are suggesting
changes in the political system rather than setting up a new
party.

Asked whether the congress would re-elect Abdurrahman Wahid as
chairman, Syansuri said the matter would be entirely up to the
participants.

"He is real smart but his ideas are often too sophisticated to
be understood by the ordinary people," he said of the incumbent
NU chairman.

Abdurrahman, he said, often comes up with "odd" ideas. For
example, he once suggested that Moslems say good morning, good
afternoon or good night instead of employing the standard Islamic
greeting of Assalamualaikum. (pan)