NU leadership race: Why did Hasyim retain power?

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

As widely predicted earlier, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chairman Hasyim Muzadi won a further five-year term despite steadfast resistance from his predecessor and former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid.

Last week's national congress of the nation's biggest Muslim organization kept Hasyim on in its top job, rejecting allegations by Gus Dur and his followers who accused the reelected chairman of dragging the NU into practical politics.

Many asked why Hasyim managed to secure a second term as chairman of the 40-million-strong organization, even though he lost NU support for his vice presidential bid when he stood as the running mate of Megawati Soekarnoputri in the July presidential election and in the September runoff.

There is no doubt that Hasyim took control of the NU structurally and organizationally, thus allowing him to win the chairmanship election during the congress in Surakarta, Central Java.

Gus Dur, meanwhile, has lost a lot of his influence in the organization he chaired for 15 years until he became the fifth president in 1999. His ouster as president in 2001 was the turning point for his popularity.

Gus Dur only received the backing of young intellectuals and many senior ulema, all of whom are outside the NU's structure but have similar grievances over Hasyim's leadership. However, their support was not enough to defeat him.

The challenge by young NU figure Masdar Farid Mas'udi during the election proved ineffective in blocking Hasyim's win despite being backed by Gus Gur.

Masdar, a young, progressive-minded intellectual with little political ambition, did not secure the support of the NU grassroots supporters and executives, though he once stood in for Hasyim as the organization's chairman when the latter stood as former president Megawati Soekarnoputri's running mate.

Gus Dur failed to realize that his charisma was no longer enough to solicit support for his comeback in the Islamic organization, while Masdar was too weak in terms of popularity to challenge Hasyim.

Nor was Masdar aware of how to serve the current needs of NU's structural leaders, whom observers say have turned into opportunist politicians.

Meanwhile, Hasyim understood what the NU executives really want -- money and other temporal necessities.

When presenting his accountability report to the national congress in Surakarta, Hasyim said his first five years of much- criticized leadership left more than Rp 5.4 billion (US$600,000) in the NU's coffers to help finance the organization's future operating costs.

This was part of Hasyim's effective campaign to secure a second term. Most of the congress participants considered the money to be proof of his success in leading the NU, without considering where the money came from.

Masdar and other anti-Hasyim NU activists accused the reelected chairman of money politics in his bid for another term. But Hasyim flatly denied this, challenging his rivals to prove their accusations.

The fact that Hasyim authorized grants worth billions of rupiah for the building or renovation of NU buildings and facilities in several areas also played a significant part in helping him get reelected.

The sources of the huge fund donated remains unclear. But many (if not most) NU structural leaders and clerics were not bothered by this, as long as the money was obtained through what they considered halal (permitted under Islamic law) means.

Many believe that Hasyim's move to stand as the running mate of Megawati, who chairs the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), in the presidential election proved to be a lucrative venture for him.

During this coming term, Hasyim should address all these grievances and counter all the accusations against him if he wants to restore his image and the credibility of the NU and its clerics.

The organization's involvement in politics will be the most contentious problem that Hasyim and charismatic cleric Sahal Mahfudz, the reelected chairman of the NU's syuriah (lawmaking body), will have to jointly address.

In reality, Sahal must also share the blame for Hasyim's dragging of the NU into politics. As the chairman of the organization's highest organ, Sahal should have prevented Hasyim from mobilizing the institutional support of the NU to back his vice presidential bid.

Young NU figure Yahya C. Staquf branded Sahal as the weakest syuriah leader in the NU's history as he never used its supreme authority to restrain Hasyim as the tanfidziyah (executive) chairman in running the Islamic organization.

This is another key problem facing the NU.

Sahal's weak leadership does not mean he has similar views to Hasyim regarding the future direction of the NU.

In his opening speech to the congress, Sahal spoke strongly against the NU's engagement in practical politics under Hasyim's leadership, and said this violated the organization's commitment to khittah (the NU's 1984 decision to stay out of politics).

What the NU needed to do as a pressure group was to play a role in the "politics of nationhood" and the "politics of people", not formal or practical politics, Sahal said.

This was in line with the khittah, which requires the NU to focus on its socio-religious mission so as to benefit its members and the nation at large.

To ensure effective leadership based on the khittah, Hasyim and Sahal will have to include young NU intellectuals in the organization's new board of executives.

These young figures would play a pivotal role in pushing the NU to focus its programs on educating, empowering and enlightening its members, tasks that the senior leaders seem to prefer avoiding.

The involvement of young scholars in the NU's structures would also be effective in promoting progressive Islamic thought among NU followers and other Indonesians in order to counter extremism and fundamentalism amid the global war on terrorism.