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)