Ulemas pick three candidates for PPP chair
By Santi WE Soekanto
REMBANG, Central Java (JP): Some 80 powerful leaders from the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) yesterday endorsed three candidates for the upcoming election of the United Development Party (PPP).
"Our candidates may be Hamzah, Matori or Karmani," Syansuri Badiawi, the senior ulema who organized the meeting said.
Sources at meeting said Syansuri virtually decided the nominations himself and the floor quickly endorsed them.
"The most senior ulema has spoken, so there were no question about the candidates again," one source said. He added that Syansuri will bring the three names to President Soeharto's attention in the near future.
The sources said that the 80 ulemas present agreed that it was now time that someone from NU leads the party.
Hamzah is currently the chairman of the PPP faction in the House of Representatives. Matori is the party's secretary general while Karmani is chairman of PPP chapter in East Java.
This is the clearest signal yet from senior NU figures of their intention to wrest the PPP helm when the party holds its congress in Jakarta in August, to unseat the incumbent chairman Ismail Hasan Metareum who is from the Muslimin Indonesia (MI).
The meeting yesterday proceeded behind closed doors and went late into the night. However, some of the main questions had been virtually settled by the time Syansuri opened the session.
Syansuri said he fully agreed with the suggestion NU should take over the PPP's leadership and reverse the party's misfortunes.
The erosion of NU's power within the party had caused PPP to lose its popularity in successive elections and assumed a weakened position in the House of Representatives, he said.
He added that PPP needs leaders who are capable and broadminded, knowledgeable and intelligent.
Karmani and Hamzah, who were present at the meeting, shied away from accepting the nominations.
"If the kyais want me, I'm ready," Karmani said.
Hamzah said he was grateful for the trust bestowed upon him.
People's aspirations
Hamzah pointed out that the Rembang meeting was part of NU's efforts to maintain and develop its party in order to make it strong, trustworthy and able to read people's aspirations.
He said he did not see how this meeting was in conflict with NU's vow in 1984 to shun party politics. Hamzah said NU leaders like him participate in PPP in their capacities as individuals and do not represent the organization.
The meeting in Rembang had been widely criticized by some within the NU and PPP, albeit for different reasons.
Critics within the NU said the meeting could give the wrong signal that the organization was making a move back into the political arena.
Some PPP leaders say the meeting would revive factional politics which the party has been trying to put behind.
PPP is a fusion of four Moslem parties in 1972. NU is by far the largest but the leadership had always gone to MI, which has counted the support of the government.
Hamzah explained that the Rembang meeting was intended to support the PPP whose support and influence have been going downhill since 1982.
"Twelve million new voters in the 1992 elections eluded our grasp," he said. "We will have to start working now if we wish to convince some 15 million new voters in the 1997 election that PPP is a good alternative (to Golkar)," he said.
PPP has come a distant second to Golkar in five successive general elections held since 1971. With the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) now coming on strong, there are now concerns that PPP could be relegated to third and last in the 1997 election.