Rembang will become `important' town soon
JAKARTA (JP): Rembang is a poor and virtually neglected town on the northern coast of Central Java, a stopover point for buses between Semarang and Surabaya.
This Sunday, however, the town which houses the grave of humanist and national heroine Raden Adjeng Kartini, will put itself back on the map.
Rembang is hosting a meeting of a group of leaders from Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) which could have wider implications for the nation's political future.
The meeting will bring together some 75 NU ulemas and politicians. The agenda is to discuss strategy for the upcoming congress of the United Development Party (PPP), one of the three political organizations in the country.
Talks are now rife that the meeting will not only discuss how to make PPP bigger as the organizers are suggesting, but also how NU should wrest the chairmanship of the PPP at the party's congress in Jakarta in late August.
The Rembang meeting could mark the return of NU, at least unofficially, to party politics, after it abandoned the PPP in a meeting in Situbondo, East Java, in 1984.
The meeting will be held at the Roudlotut pesantren (Moslem boarding school) which is owned by 52-year-old Kholil Bisri, a NU figure and a PPP member of the House of Representatives.
Students of the school have been deployed in full force to tidy up the school's accommodations for the 75 participants and their delegates, as well as prepare the meeting halls for the Sunday meeting.
Journalists cannot stay here, Kholil said. "They can stay at the local hotels," he was quoted by Kompas daily as saying.
Hotels booked
An indication of the importance of this meeting is the hordes of journalists and observers who are turning up to follow the event live. The few hotels and inns available in Rembang are already booked solid for the entire weekend.
Rembang proper is the seat of the regency of the same name.
Although geographically in Central Java, the region's traditions and culture more closely resemble an East Java regency.
The area was one of the main entry points for Islam when the religion was brought by Arab traders to this part of the world.
But what strikes visitors most on a first visit to the area is the abject poverty that exists in comparison to nearby towns like Juwana, Pati and Blora, according to a Kompas reporter.
The region's mainly produces salt, which people farm along the coast. For most people though, life is a hard struggle.
Perhaps the only thing that the people of this area can take pride in is that they host the grave of national heroine Kartini (1879-1904), who wrote articles expressing her concern about education and poverty.
Ironically, her grave is still surrounded by the poverty that she fought against. (17)