Transcending personality politics

Inside Indonesia

The election of Anas Urbaningrum suggests Partai Demokrat can survive without its founder, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

Luke Barrett

The leader that will be? Yudhoyono’s son, Ibas Luke Barrett

The constant chanting of 'Demokrat, Demokrat, SBY, SBY' by party members at the second Democratic Party (PD) congress, which took place in Bandung from 21-23 May, neatly described the dilemma facing the party. Most observers have painted PD as the personal vehicle of President Yudhoyono since his victory in the 2004 presidential elections. This interpretation explains PD's rise as the result of Yudhoyono's charismatic personality and his ability to reach voters through the mass media. Some have even gone so far as to claim that Yudhoyono is PD, and that with nothing to offer voters beyond its famous patron, the party is likely to vanish after Yudhoyono leaves the presidency in 2014. In this context, party members delivered a surprising result at the Bandung congress, with Yudhoyono's preferred candidate as party chairperson, the Minister for Youth and Sports, Andi Mallarangeng, and then second choice, House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Alie, both losing to the leader of the party's group in national parliament, Anas Urbaningrum. Such an outcome suggests that, internally if not yet electorally, the party is not merely the creature of its famous patron, but lives up to its 'democratic' title.

To any observer in the week prior to the Bandung congress, Anas's victory would have come as something of a surprise. If, as many claim, Indonesian politics is an arena for those with media, money and a strong political machine, then Andi Mallarangeng seemed to be the certain victor in the contest to become chairperson. Andi has been a prominent member of the Indonesian political elite since the fall of Suharto in 1998. He was a member of the 'Team of Seven' that was charged by the country's third President, B.J. Habibie, with drafting a package of new laws about political parties, elections and regional government in preparation for the first post-Suharto election in 1999. During those elections he served as a member of the general election commission (KPU). Andi was also a founding member of the United Democratic Nationhood Party (PPDK) in 2002, but left less than two years later to join PD. While there was widespread media coverage of all three candidates in the lead up to the congress, Andi was the most prominent, in terms of the number of both stories about his candidacy and advertisements supporting his campaign. This media blitz culminated in Andi having thousands of his campaign posters hung in the areas near the congress venue, as well as along Bandung's major streets and the highway leading to the city from Jakarta. Andi's media-heavy strategy, which was formulated with the help of Fox Indonesia, a media consulting company headed by his brothers Rizal and Choel, seemed designed as a test for the campaign he might run should he be chosen as PD's candidate for the presidential election in 2014.

Trying to build a sense of inevitability to his election, a major part of Andi's strategy was to emphasise his close links to Yudhoyono and to try to portray himself as the president's choice for the position. While Yudhoyono did not make a public statement in support of any of the candidates, the media reported the participation of a number of government ministers from PD in Andi's campaign team and the presence of the president's youngest son, Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono (Ibas), at Andi's campaign events, as clear signs of the president's wishes. And, when Andi launched a book about his vision for the party at Bandung's Sheraton Hotel the night before the congress opened, party officials told me about rumours that Yudhoyono himself was pressuring Anas to withdraw from the contest.
The heir apparent falters

Andi's strategy started to unravel almost as soon as the congress began. In a speech to the congress on the Saturday morning, which was much more alive and engaging than his dour performance in his opening address the previous night, Yudhoyono again refrained from endorsing any candidate for party chairperson. Instead, he explained that he respected the party's internal democracy, because the interests of the party were 'above any individual' such as himself, who was 'only the chairperson'. For that reason, Yudhoyono said that he would not sit in on the congress proceedings to ensure that he did not exercise too much influence, but that if conflict emerged, he was available to provide a solution.





The blimp didn’t help: Andi’s campaign was lavish, but ineffective
Luke Barrett


Yudhoyono apparently did not anticipate the ensuing debates to be so fiercely contested. From the very start of the congress, the discussion was bogged down in acrimony and debate on a procedural point: whether the election of the party's chairperson should take place before or after debate about the party's statutes. The debate turned into a test of strength between the candidates, with supporters of Anas and Marzuki carrying the day in favour of immediately electing the party chairperson. This issue was resolved in their favour by a vote on Saturday night, after almost ten hours of debate. While delegates continued their discussions after this vote, many other agenda items were rushed through as delegates turned their thoughts towards the election of a new chairperson.

As the final day of the congress began, the first agenda item was the re-election of Yudhoyono as the chairperson of the party's central guidance board, an event that occurred without debate or contestation. In his acceptance speech, which doubled as an opening address for the final day's events, Yudhoyono urged the contenders for chairperson to accept defeat and continue to work together for the interests of the party. He then left the hall, signaling to party delegates that they were free to vote as they chose. After the counting began in mid-afternoon, it was soon evident that the question was no longer whether or not Andi would win, but which of Marzuki and Anas would triumph, as the two built an overwhelming lead over the predicted victor. The first round of voting ended with Andi having received 82 votes, or 16 per cent of the total, while Marzuki obtained 209 votes (40 per cent) and Anas finished in the lead with 236 (45 per cent). After the congress chair allowed for one hour of further discussion prior to the final vote, Andi directed his supporters to back Marzuki, who was also said to be the favoured candidate of Yudhoyono in the run-off.

However, if Andi really did give such instructions, they were not obeyed by the delegates, with Anas winning the second round by a margin of 280 votes, 53 per cent of the total, to 248 for Marzuki (47 per cent). This victory provides evidence that PD is not simply beholden to the personal will of president Yudhoyono. At least, when Yudhoyono signals that party members are free to make up their own minds, they will take him at his word and not simply bend to what they see as his will.
A victory for democracy

The election for party chairperson illustrates that there is a burgeoning internal democracy within PD, though it is one that is still mixed with a dose of old-style patronage politics. One illustration of these contradictory trends was how all of the candidates made substantial efforts to win support from grassroots party members by paying for their travel to the convention, and for their hotel rooms, food and spending money while there. Yet it was obvious that Andi spent much more than his opponents on such activities, which became almost as integral as the use of media to his style of campaigning. Outside the convention venue, Andi even had a tent set up for his supporters where food and beverages were served during the day, along with musical entertainment and full massage treatments. However, Andi's strategy did not appeal directly to the PD members who were eligible to vote for the chairperson, even though it was generally effective with ordinary party members. As I talked with Andi supporters in the tent a few hours before the congress opened, I did not meet a single voting delegate, and only a few who had passes allowing them inside the hall where the congress would take place. The methods of populist campaigning with direct appeals to the 'masses' don't necessarily translate well to an internal party election.





Party time: few of the people hanging out in Andi’s tent had voting rights
Luke Barrett


Andi's defeat shows that PD's internal democracy is still largely dominated by the professional politicians who constitute the backbone of the party structure in the regions. The only party members actually allowed into the congress venue were those who were invited from PD's central, provincial and branch leadership boards, the central guidance board and the branches established by the party to represent members overseas. Furthermore, each of these levels of the party organisation had a different number of votes in the election for chairperson: the central guidance board was allocated five votes, the central leadership board three, provincial leadership boards two each, and district and overseas branches a single vote each. As such, the party had generally issued invitations to only the chairperson and treasurer of each party board, both of whom tended to be members of provincial or district legislatures or executive governments.

Anas and Marzuki emerged as the leading candidates precisely because of their hard work in building close relationships in this layer of middle-level party leaders. In canvassing for support amongst PD branches, both were able to draw on their previous experiences in navigating organisational, as opposed to image, politics. Anas had been chairperson of Indonesia's largest student organisation, HMI (Islamic Students Association), from 1997 until 1999, and retained a lot of good will amongst many of its former members who had later joined PD. Anas had also, unlike Andi, been a member of the PD central board since 2005, which allowed him to develop relationships with party officials throughout the country. He could rely on such people to support his candidacy as chairperson. Though Anas's networking skills were vital to his victory, he did not feel that networking alone would be sufficient to win; he also spent a substantial amount of money on television advertisements and banners.

Marzuki, on the other hand, who spent no money on media advertising and officially declared his candidacy only a day before the congress began, wholly focused on a strategy of internal party networking. Marzuki, after a stint as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance, began working for a state-owned cement company in his home city of Palembang, becoming the director in 1999 and holding the position until 2006. After joining PD in 2003, Marzuki rose quickly to the post of secretary general, responsible for the party's administrative matters. He held this position from 2005 until 2009, enabling him to build a network of supporters throughout the party apparatus in a way that Andi, who was at that time the president's spokesperson and then a cabinet minister, could not. Many of Marzuki's supporters were lower-level party officials who wanted to repay a secretary-general whom they felt had taken a personal interest in their concerns.
An absent ideology

Anas's victory was a result of a campaign strategy that, in broad terms, focused on how to ensure that PD survives as an electoral force after Yudhoyono steps down from the presidency. In press conferences prior to the congress, Anas openly stated that PD would no longer be able to rely exclusively on Yudhoyono's image in 2014 and had to plan accordingly by becoming more strongly institutionalised. Anas's main promise in this regard was that he would decentralise the internal structure of PD to allow local party branches more control over matters such as the selection of candidates for local government elections. Such a move would significantly alter the existing party structure in which all decision-making power rests, whether officially or not, in the hands of Yudhoyono and a body called the high assembly (Majelis Tinggi). The assembly, established by the endorsement of delegates at the Bandung congress, is simply a further avenue for Yudhoyono to exercise his dominance over the party because, as its chair, he has the right to pick six out of its other eight members. The establishment of the Majelis Tinggi shows that there are contradictory trends within the party: on the one hand, centralisation of power in the hands of Yudhoyono, on the other, a strong desire for decentralisation on the part of many local branch leaders.

Yet at the congress, it was the promise of decentralisation that proved decisive to Anas's victory. The rancorous debate on the agenda which opened the congress becomes understandable from this perspective. The push to hold the election for party chairperson prior to the discussion of the party statutes was led by Anas's supporters. They hoped that, if Anas won, they would be able to rewrite the statutes in line with Anas's promises of decentralisation. This stratagem became clear after the election when congress participants divided into three commissions that were to discuss, respectively, the party's rules and structures, its ideological vision, and its strategy for the upcoming election period. The commission that focused on party rules and structures had the most attendees, and as soon as it opened, a number of participants voiced objections that the draft document was too centralistic and gave the central guidance board too much power. Others protested that, with only one hour allocated to the discussion, which was one third of what the initial program had allowed, there was not enough time to 'synchronise' the party structure with Anas's vision of devolved decision-making power. Still others called for the commission not to adopt the draft statutes and, instead, to recommend that the congress allow more time for discussions. Although the committee members eventually agreed on a compromise recommendation that the document be adopted in principle and rewritten later with a greater emphasis on decentralisation, this solution provided yet another example of party leaders being democratically out-manouvered by ordinary delegates.





The leader that is: Yudhoyono chose not to intervene in the party leadership election
Luke Barrett


The strong support for Anas's program of decentralisation is especially interesting in light of how little the three candidates discussed substantive ideological or programmatic issues during the congress. In fact, Anas's proposal for decentralisation of the party's internal structures was the only substantive aspect from any of the candidate's programs, which were instead full of vague phrases about 'modernisation' of party structures or how to develop PD as 'middle party', without any detailed explanation of what these terms meant. Party members did express loyalty towards the 'nationalist-religious' and 'middle party' formulations which Yudhoyono has used to depict PD as a party that adheres to neither political Islam nor secular nationalism, but occupies a position somewhere between the two. Yet no one, including Yudhoyono, outlined what these phrases meant in terms of a precise political agenda for Indonesia. One observer told me that, in contrast to the commission that deliberated the party's rules and structures, there was no controversy, and not even much debate, in the commission that discussed PD's ideology.
A strong personality

We should not jump too quickly to the conclusion that PD has become completely democratic internally. Though the outcome reflected the views held by party members, Yudhoyono was re-elected as chairperson of the central guidance board by acclamation rather than a formal vote. Also, just as Anas's victory began to look increasingly likely, rumours began to circulate that Yudhoyono's son, Ibas, would become the next secretary-general of PD, despite his youth and limited political experience. While some observers dismissed this possibility, the rumours intensified in the weeks after the congress, with media outlets reporting favourable comments about Ibas's candidacy by senior party figures, including Anas. Ibas's appointment to the post was announced to the media on June 22.

We can see from the Bandung congress that PD and its patron face a paradoxical future. The rejection of Yudhoyono's favoured candidate, as well as his own lack of interference in congress deliberations are encouraging signs that the party may be able to outlive its founder. However, much will depend on whether Yudhoyono himself is ready to let 'Demokrat, Demokrat' move beyond the phenomenon of 'SBY, SBY'.

Luke Barrett (lbarrett33@gmail.com) in 2009 wrote an honours thesis at the Australian National University about Indonesian party politics. He wishes to thank PD for generously providing access to all sessions of its congress and Marcus Mietzner for arranging access and for his input.




Inside Indonesia 101: Jul-Sep 2010

US has ended lethal weapon sales ban to Indonesia

Image by nifwlseirff via Flickr

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 07/05/2010

To quell public confusion on the state of Indonesia’s military relations with the US, the Defense Ministry confirmed that the world’s largest weapons-maker has completely lifted an embargo banning weapon sales to the Indonesian Military (TNI).

In its first clear statement on the embargo’s end, a Defense Ministry spokesman said that Indonesia could procure any type of weapon from the US because there was no longer an embargo.

“The US embargo on the sale of any type of weapon to Indonesia ended completely in 2005,” Indonesian Defense Ministry spokesman I Wayan Midhio said over the weekend.

“After the embargo ended, there were no more distinctions to be made between lethal or non-lethal weapons sales,” he said.

Indonesia can now purchase lethal weapons from the US and there is no “partial prohibition” of arms sales to Indonesia, as was previously reported, he added.

Many observers — even those well-informed on bilateral military relations — said they did not know if Indonesia could buy lethal weapons from the US or not, even after military ties resumed in 2005.

Indonesia recently proposed a plan to purchase American-made F-16 jet fighters, which are categorized as lethal weapons, and C-130H Hercules cargo jets, which are not considered lethal, if the US lifted its embargo, as previously reported.

Wayan said Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro expressed the government’s intent to buy the aircraft in a bilateral meeting with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Image by Joel Abroad via Flickr

The US Congress imposed an embargo that banned international military education and training (IMET) and military equipment sales to Indonesia almost two decades ago.

The embargo was imposed in response to repeated human rights abuses committed by the Indonesian Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus) in West Papua and Timor Leste (then East Timor), which killed more than 100 unarmed civilians, including two US citizens, and injured dozens.

Some experts maintain that the US encouraged Indonesia’s use of lethal force against civilians in East Timor.

Padjadjaran University international relations expert Teuku Rezasyah said history shows that former US president Gerald Ford and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger gave the Indonesian government a “green light” to send Kopassus to East Timor and ignored reports of violence during official US government visits to Indonesia.

The US Congress said it would lift the ban entirely only if the US government could ensure that Indonesia addressed human rights violations.

An Indonesian government delegation led by former president Megawati Soekarnoputeri, visited the US in 2001 in an attempt to soften the policy.

The meeting between Megawati and former US president George W. Bush resulted in a US commitment to provide US$400,000 in extended IMET and to lift the embargo on non-lethal military weapon sales.

The US Congress has not approved joint military trainings between Kopassus and the US military due to alleged Kopassus human rights abuses.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to raise the issue during US President Barack Obama’s planned visit to Indonesia in November.

Super Size Cabinet

Image by FriskoDude via Flickr

The President appoints three more deputy ministers, making his cabinet the largest since the New Order era.

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DIRECTOR-General of Higher Education Fasli Jalal picked up the phone in his office, Thursday two weeks ago. On the other end of the line was Minister/State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, who asked Fasli to report to President Yudhoyono. “I was told to bring along my CV,” he said. Monday afternoon, last week, Fasli drove to the Presidential Palace after reporting to his superior, Muhammad Nuh. At the Palace, this alumni of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, received word from the President that he was about to become Deputy Minister of Education.

Fahmi’s inauguration took place at the State Palace, Wednesday last week. Aside from Fahmi, President Yudhoyono also inaugurated the Deputy State National Development Planning Minister for the Funding Division Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo, and Secretary-General of the Defense Department Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, each serving as deputy minister in their corresponding government bodies. The deputy ministers’ inauguration was held at the same time with the inauguration of Dipo Alam—Deputy of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy—as the Minister/Cabinet Secretary, a position which had previously been left vacant ever since Sudi Silalahi, moved to the State Secretariat.

Minister of Education Muhammad Nuh warmly welcomed Fasli, his new deputy. “He would surely help me in doing my work,” said the former Minister of Communication & Information. Fasli has been around in the Education Department for a while. He joined the department a decade ago, as a senior staff who served under Minister Yahya Muhaimin during Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency, leading a number of directorates general. When drafting began for the United Indonesia Cabinet II, Fasli was one of the most favored candidates nominated to replace the predecessor, Bambang Sudibyo.

Like Nuh, Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro was delighted with Sjafrie’s appointment. “In my opinion, there has to be a deputy minister because we have lots of work and budget,” said this Minister of Energy & Mineral Resources from 2000-2009. According to him, Sjafrie will deal with matters related to the army and police, including foreign affairs whenever the minister is unavailable. Former Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono considers Sjafrie as the right man for the job due to his knowledge of military techniques.

Following the president’s announcement of his cabinet members last October, Nuh and Purnomo were among the ones who received the most attention because they were considered as not having enough experience to be placed in their positions. Politics observer Arbi Sanit thinks that Nuh’s experience—despite he once became a dean—is still insufficient. “He was chosen due to his closeness to SBY, he has no outstanding qualities,” said Arbi. While Jaleswari Pramowardhani, a military observer from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, thinks that Purnomo has a technocratic tendency and lacks military knowledge. “He did serve as deputy chair of the National Resilience Institute in 1998, but things are different now,” she said.

Deputy appointments for these two ministers raises suspicion that the president wants to provide some cover for his less capable cabinet members. However, the president has come up with his own answer. President Yudhoyono said the deputy minister appointment for some departments was based on the consideration of the heavy workload and the target of his current cabinet. According to SBY, he expects the Deputy Minister of Defense to help formulate policies and defense strategies, as well as modernize the defense system primary tools. As for the Deputy Minister of Education, SBY expects him to help with the education reforms.

Deputy minister appointment is the president’s privilege as mentioned in the State Department Law No. 39/2008. Its Article 10 says, “In case of heavy workloads which require special treatment, the president may appoint deputy ministers for corresponding deprtments.” Member of the House of Representatives (DPR) Agun Gunandjar Sudarsa said that the deputy minister appointments might actually help with the overgrown bureaucracy in several departments. “There are departments that have more than ten Echelon 1 officers,” said the Chairman of the State Department Law Special Committee.

Last week’s three deputy ministers appointment was the third wave of similar actions. Triyono Wibowo, appointed as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in September 11, 2008, was the first. Slightly different from the two following appointments, Triyono—then the Ambassador for the Republic of Austria and the Republic of Slovenia, and also acted as a UN Representative in Vienna—was appointed by Minister Hassan Wirajuda in the Department’s office at Pejambon, Central Jakarta.

In the second wave in November 11, 2009, more deputy ministers were appointed: Bayu Krisnamurti (Deputy Minister of Agriculture), Bambang Susantono (Deputy Minister of Transportation), Mahendra Siregar (Deputy Minister of Trade), Alex Retraubun (Deputy Minister of Industry), and Hermando Dardak (Deputy Minister of Public Works). That time, the President also appointed Gita Wirjawan as Chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board. It means the United Indonesia Cabinet II now has nine deputy ministers.

According to plan, the number should have grown to 11, had the President inaugurated Fahmi Idris as Deputy Minister of Health and Anggito Abimanyu as Deputy Minister of Finance. Appointments for the 2006-2009 Chairman of the Indonesian Medical Association and Chairman of Fiscal Policy Board of the Department of Finance were cancelled due to administrative reasons. According to the Minister/State Secretary Sudi Silalahi, the two candidates have not met the requirement of occupying an Echelon 1-A structural position. “If that has not been fulfilled, we cannot proceed. We do not want to break the rules,” he said. Sudi offered no explanation on when the two would be inaugurated either.

Even as it is only an administrative one, politics observer Eep Saefulloh Fatah said the mistake is serious and fatal. “The president is reckless when taking such important policies,” he said. A day before the intended appointments, presidential spokesperson Julian Aldrin Pasha revealed the appointment plans to reporters. Although he mentioned no specific name, Julian nodded when Tempo asked him whether Fahmi Idris and Anggito Abimanyu were amongst the list. According to Julian, the deputy minister candidates have signed their performance contracts and integrity pacts.

On the deputy minister appointments, Eep thinks of it as a proof of the president’s lack of commitment towards bureaucracy reforms. “This is the most overcrowded cabinet in the reform era. It even has more people than the entire New Order cabinets,” he said. This deputy minister appointment is a different matter compared to when Suharto appointed his junior ministers. Junior minister was a position formed in preparation of a new department. For example, Cosmas Batubara was appointed Junior Minister of Public Housing before he occupied the position as minister in the next period.

According to Eep, there are some positions which actually require deputy ministers, like the Department of Defense and the Department of Finance. The many deputy ministers today shows that there is no clear criteria as to which department requires one. He further added that if such notion continues, soon there would be no reason not to appoint deputy minister in every department. “This is a fatal political mistake, one which clearly shows the President’s terrible imagination. His creativity is questionable,” he said.

As Eep said, the president is facing multiple choices. Included in his array of choices are the options to select between a competent, but non-partisan individual, a partisan individual who is also competent, or whether to adopt accommodation politics. “But the President could not decide between the three options,” he said. It later resulted in an overcrowded cabinet.

Constitutional law expert Irman Putra Sidin said that an overcrowded cabinet goes against the spirit of decentralization. “An officer who finds little to do in Jakarta will be looking for work, like getting his hands on something which should have been the portion of the regional administration,” he said.

Adek Media, Gunanto, Cornila Desyana

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New leadership, new policies? - Inside Indonesia

Image of Martin van Bruinessen

The Nahdlatul Ulama congress in Makassar arrests the slide away from liberal views but shows the organisation's vulnerability to outside political interference

Martin van Bruinessen

'From the pesantren for Indonesia’ Jeremy Menchik

There was much relief at the outcome of the leadership elections on the final day of Nahdlatul Ulama's 32nd Congress last March. A destructive struggle for the position of Rois Aam, the 'spiritual' leader of the organisation, had threatened to divide the organisation. It had been warded off when the politically ambitious Hasyim Muzadi bowed out at the last moment, leaving this most prestigious position to the incumbent, the venerable Kiai Sahal Mahfudh. The two-stage election of a new chairperson of the executive (the position held by Hasyim Muzadi for the past two terms) had been full of surprises, including the early defeat of the man who had run the best media campaign, Salahuddin Wahid, and the unexpectedly strong showing of Golkar politician Slamet Effendy Yusuf. As a result, the victory of Said Aqil Siradj felt like a victory for the world of the pesantren over outside political interests.

'We had a lot of turbulence, but you see: in the end we made a smooth landing,' one of the senior kiai told me, and at that moment I was inclined to agree with him; NU appeared to have protected itself from too overt political interference. But there were to be a few more surprises before the plane reached the gate.

As Indonesia's largest civil association (and arguably the largest Muslim organisation in the world), Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) remains by its sheer size a force that politicians have to take into account. The major contenders in Indonesia's power struggles generally try to gain its support or at least goodwill. Originally established as an association of traditionalist Islamic scholars (ulama or kiai) who typically lead traditional Islamic boarding schools known as pesantren, NU was, upon Indonesia's independence, transformed into a political party. Later, in 1984, it became a cultural-religious association of moderate views credibly claiming to represent tens of millions of followers.

The dual character of the organisation - an association of ulama and a mass organisation with a large constituency - is reflected in the dual board, in which an ulama council (Syuriyah) led by the Rois Aam is supposed to oversee the chairperson and other managers of the executive (Tanfidziyah). During recent years, the relationship between these two bodies deteriorated as Hasyim Muzadi drew the organisation into political adventures, overriding the objections of Kiai Sahal Mahfudh. The latter's victory at the congress can be interpreted as a strong statement that ulama, not politicians, should hold supreme authority in the organisation and that practical political interests should be kept at a distance. Paradoxically, however, this victory was probably also largely due to outside political interference.

During the past decade, NU had also begun to depart from some of the liberal religious views it had upheld during the 1990s, as part of a general trend towards expression of more 'fundamentalist' religious views that can also be observed in other Muslim organisations. Both Kiai Sahal and Hasyim Muzadi had in fact endorsed this trend, and young NU intellectuals and activists were deeply concerned about the future of liberal and progressive thought in the organisation. In this respect, the congress reaffirmed NU's ability to accommodate widely different views; liberals and progressives found a modest representation in the new board, alongside traditionalists and conservatives.

NU under Hasyim Muzadi

There were good reasons to believe, as many did, that the congress could be decisive for the course of NU in the coming decades, notably its ability to accommodate the expectations and demands of the more highly educated segment of the younger generation. At the previous congress, in 2004, the organisation had moved significantly away from the support for 'liberal' and 'progressive' Islamic thought that had been associated with Abdurrahman Wahid (popularly known as Gus Dur) during his leadership of the organisation in 1984-1999. Hasyim Muzadi, who had succeeded Abdurrahman in 1999 (with more than a little endorsement by the latter), had soon fallen out with his predecessor and shown himself a very different type of leader: a more effective organiser and fund-raiser perhaps, but socially and religiously conservative.

Hasyim distrusted the young activists who had grown up under Gus Dur's protection and placed his own trusted people in control of the organisation at all levels. He adopted a populist, moderately anti-Western discourse and tended to ally himself with the more conservative factions of the military and political establishment. The 2004 congress, at which he secured his re-election, adopted a firm position of rejecting 'liberal' thought, declaring especially the Jakarta-based Liberal Islam Network (JIL) to be at odds with the NU worldview, and by implication also rejecting many of the other NU-affiliated NGOs that challenged established practices and ideas.

The shift in NU was part of a broader conservative turn in Indonesian Islam taking place around that time

This shift in NU was part of a broader conservative turn in Indonesian Islam taking place around that time. At Muhammadiyah's national congress later in the same year, all bodies and committees of the organisation were similarly purged of 'liberals' (who included highly respected university professors with many years of service to the organisation). The following year, the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) issued its notorious fatwas against the Ahmadiyah sect and against broadly defined 'secularism, pluralism and liberalism'. The Ministry of Religious Affairs also veered to the right under the new minister, Maftuh Basyuni, a confidant of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with conservative views.

It may not be accidental that Hasyim Muzadi, Maftuh Basyuni and Muhammadiyah's new chairperson, Din Syamsuddin, all were graduates of the well-known pesantren of Gontor, which had once been known as 'modern' but under the influence of the Muslim World League had increasingly become associated with the more puritan and anti-Western currents of Islamic thought and the rejection of modernist interpretations. (Other Gontor graduates playing conspicuous public roles include the militant preacher Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and several prominent Salafis.)

The 2004 purge of the 'liberals' was not as radical in NU as in Muhammadiyah, and there were quite a few NU ulama who disagreed with the sweeping fatwas of MUI. There remained a few independent and original thinkers on the board, notably Masdar F. Mas'udi, who penned a thoughtful refutation of the MUI's anti-liberal fatwas. But they found themselves increasingly marginalised and cut off from decision-making processes in which they should have been taking part. Most of the young NU activists who had felt stimulated, supported and protected by Abdurrahman Wahid complained of being sidelined under Hasyim Muzadi. Many of the kiai appeared to follow the general conservative trend and to endorse Hasyim's anti-cosmopolitan attitude. Some of the most prominent kiai, however, felt unease about Hasyim's unbridled political ambitions, which they felt could harm NU.

Under his leadership, Hasyim drew the NU organisation more deeply into 'practical politics' than it had been since the Situbondo congress of 1984, where it had decided to withdraw from direct political involvement and to prevent its office holders simultaneously holding positions in any political party. Abdurrahman Wahid had, it is true, initiated the return to politics as early as 1999, when he established the National Awakening Party (PKB), to serve as the vehicle for the interests of the NU constituency and his own ambitions, but he maintained a clear separation between the party and NU organisation.

Hasyim, however, used NU itself as the vehicle for his political ambitions, and he used his political connections to strengthen his position within NU. In the 2004 presidential elections he teamed up with Megawati as her vice presidential candidate, and in 2009 he committed himself strongly to Jusuf Kalla's candidacy. Both forays into electoral politics ended in failure (and, some felt, humiliation for NU) but enabled Hasyim to dispense lavish patronage and buy support. On the eve of the congress, Hasyim appeared to be the strongest of the various contenders, having secured promises of support from most of the larger delegations.

Candidates for the leadership

Hasyim had announced well in advance of the congress that he did not envisage a third term as chairperson but wished to move up from the Tanfidziyah (the executive board) to the Syuriyah, the council of leading ulama. The incumbent Rois Aam, Kiai Sahal Mahfudh, appeared to have no intentions to retire, however; and in fact most of the previous Rois Aam had kept that position until their deaths. At Hasyim's initiative, new by-laws were drafted that would limit the duration of this office, as well as that of chairperson of the executive, to a maximum of two five-year periods and thereby would oblige Kiai Sahal to resign.

Members of the old board at the first session of the congress Martin van Bruinessen

In response to this manoeuvre, a group of kiai and activists in Central Java appealed to Kiai Sahal to stay in office in order to prevent further politicisation of the organisation. The widely respected and popular kiai, Musthofa Bisri (a.k.a. Gus Mus) was seen by many, especially the younger members, as the ideal person to lead the organisation. None less than Abdurrahman Wahid had, only weeks before his death, attempted to persuade Gus Mus to stand for Rois Aam. However, as long as Kiai Sahal still wanted to continue in that position, Gus Mus did not wish to be a candidate.

Meanwhile, no less than seven men had announced their interest in succeeding Hasyim as chairperson of the Tanfidziyah. Three of them were already members of the executive. Hasyim himself endorsed Ahmad Bagja, a loyal and experienced but otherwise unremarkable bureaucrat of the organisation, who had been Hasyim's campaign manager in his bid for the vice-presidency in 2004. Said Aqil Siradj had run against Hasyim (and ended second) at two previous congresses; Masdar Mas'udi had challenged Hasyim (and come out third) in 2004. Both had been made members of the Tanfidziyah but were kept out of Hasyim's inner circle. A fourth candidate, Ali Maschan Musa, headed the provincial NU executive in East Java.

The other three candidates were relative outsiders. Slamet Effendy Yusuf was a leader of NU's youth movement Ansor in the 1980s but then made a career in Golkar. Salahuddin Wahid, a younger brother of Gus Dur who was educated as an engineer at the Bandung Institute of Technology, had never been active in the organisation, was a consistent and fierce critic of his brother, and was perceived to be close to the conservative wings of reformist Islam. In 2004 he had taken part in the presidential race as Wiranto's running mate, but since that venture into politics he had moved to the family pesantren at Tebuireng and appeared to be emulating his uncle Jusuf Hasjim, who had long been a prominent NU politician (and fierce critic of Gus Dur too).

The most remarkable candidate was Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, the best known member of JIL whose contributions to Muslim discourse had been judged beyond the pale in 2004. It was unlikely that he would stand a serious chance in 2010, but Ulil and his supporters appeared intent on showing that they represented an important voice within NU, with considerable support at the grassroots level, especially among the younger generation.

Money politics

Not only were there more candidates for the position of chairperson than at previous congresses, there was also more talk of vote-buying and attempts by outside interests to influence the outcome of the vote. There had been heavy-handed outside intervention before, notably at the 1994 congress when Suharto attempted to prevent the re-election of Abdurrahman Wahid, but then it had consisted of political pressure and lobbying rather than financial handouts. In 2010, more outside parties were interested in supporting or opposing particular candidates. Another reason why 'money politics' was more conspicuous was the precarious financing of the congress, which made delegates dependent on financial sponsors.

With tens of millions of nominal members - in other words people who feel more or less represented by the organisation - Nahdlatul Ulama is a politically significant entity. But these numbers do not translate into financial strength. Membership dues, paid by only a small minority, constitute an insignificant fraction of the budget, and apart from some real estate the organisation does not control any significant resources. Irregular contributions by various sponsors provided three quarters of the budget over the past five years, which amounted to a modest 40 billion rupiah, about US$ 4.2 million. The single largest sponsor, as Hasyim stated in his report to the congress, had been former vice-president Jusuf Kalla, whose bid for the presidency in 2009 Hasyim had strongly endorsed. It was no accident that the congress was convened in Kalla's home province of South Sulawesi.

In the Suharto era, it had been common for the president and vice-president to pay the bulk of the costs of the large congresses of organisations such as Nahdlatul Ulama. Large companies (among which cigarette manufacturers always were conspicuous) also made significant contributions. Provincial governors commonly contributed to the travel expenses of delegations from their provinces. This time around, there was no such overall funding, and the central board and provincial and local branches had to find their own resources. (In fact, the congress had initially been planned for an earlier date but had been postponed because not sufficient money had been raised.) This opened the door for money politics.

Candidates offered to pay travel expenses and other costs for those delegates who promised to vote for them. Vote buying continued during the congress, as delegates were persuaded to shift their allegiances. A local newspaper reported that votes were sold for 25 million rupiah. This is a ridiculously small sum compared to the amounts that change hands at Golkar congresses but represents a new phenomenon at NU congresses, where other forms of persuasion were previously the norm.

The vote

To all appearances, Hasyim was in firm control of the entire congress. All sessions were chaired by people he could trust; he had in advance dispensed generous patronage to people of influence (which included a well-publicised umrah pilgrimage to Mecca for some regional NU grandees); and a firm majority of the delegates appeared to have pledged their support for his candidacy as the Rois Aam. Many branches in fact seemed to have sent staunch Hasyim loyalists as their delegates - there was a noticeable difference in attitude between the official delegates, who were mostly local organisers, and the other attendees, who included ulama and young NU activists.

However, many of the ulama present thought that Hasyim might be a good manager but lacked the depth of religious learning required of the Rois Aam, and they were scandalised by Hasyim's undisguised attempt to unseat the senior and much more learned Kiai Sahal. Efforts by senior ulama to negotiate a face-saving solution failed because both rivals declined to attend a crucial meeting. The United Development Party (PPP) proposed a senior kiai from its own ranks, Maimun Zubair, as an alternative, and rumours that Hasyim had agreed to endorse this 'political' kiai caused some additional confusion. Behind-the-scene negotiations dragged on and caused the election to be postponed beyond the return flights of some of the delegates.

Tension was high when the voting for the Rois Aam finally began on the fifth and last day of the congress. As usual, there were two rounds: in the first round, the 500-odd delegates put forward names of candidates, and in the second round those who had been proposed by more than 99 delegates and had accepted the candidacy were to compete for the position.

To the surprise of Hasyim and his allies, who had until that moment felt secure of their majority, far more delegates named Kiai Sahal than Hasyim (272 against 179), guaranteeing the former an absolute majority. Visibly shocked and deeply disappointed, Hasyim bowed out and withdrew from the race. His faction pointed the finger at President Yudhoyono, whom they suspected of having orchestrated massive vote-buying in the final days. (Hasyim after all was politically allied with rivals of Yudhoyono, and the latter no doubt had an interest in an NU board that would support him.) Several personalities known to be close to the president could in fact be seen lobbying in the margins of the congress - but so were political operators representing the Golkar, PPP and PKB parties and yet other political interests. No less important was the moral pressure exerted by several senior kiai, who persuaded their peers - and through them many delegates - that it was not 'ethical' to force the incumbent Rois Aam out of office, and that the Syuriah should remain aloof from direct political involvement.

The election of the chairperson of the executive was, if anything, even more politicised. On the eve of the congress, President Yudhoyono had received Said Aqil Siradj and Salahuddin Wahid in his residence at Cikeas, suggesting that out of the seven contenders these were the ones he endorsed. They also appeared to consider themselves the only serious candidates and refused to take part in a televised debate with the other five on their vision for the organisation's future. Salahuddin's supporters had covered the city with hundreds of banners and posters, some representing him as the heir apparent in the dynasty that had dominated NU from its inception (with his grandfather, Hasyim Asy'ari, being a founder and the first Rois Aam, his father, Wahid Hasyim, leading the organisation in the early 1950s, and his elder brother Abdurrahman Wahid the most charismatic recent leader), others with photographs of senior kiai who gave him their blessing. Said's campaign was slightly less exuberant, with banners promising he would take NU 'back to the pesantren'. The other candidates spent less money on this sort of publicity (with the exception of Slamet Effendy Yusuf, who in some huge banners posed as a bureaucrat dressed for Friday prayer, reading an Arabic book), but an overall atmosphere was created that reminded many of a pilkada (an election of a regional government head) rather than of earlier NU congresses.

The televised debate, held on the second day in one of the congress halls in front of an enthusiastic audience, was also a novelty. Slamet and Ulil Abshar-Abdallah used it effectively to present themselves as serious contenders. Slamet could boast he had played a role in preparing the changes adopted at the important Situbondo congress of 1984, and more pragmatically, that he had much experience and many contacts in Golkar (and thereby access to considerable funds). Ulil succeeded in conveying not only that he had deep roots, by family and education, in NU but also that he had reflected more than others about the course NU needed to take to remain significant to its members in a changing world. He appeared to be less isolated in the organisation than the official ban of JIL had suggested.

Ulil's showing in the first round of the vote was low, with 22 delegates putting forward his name, but remarkable under the circumstances. He had had little money to spread around, and the support of only a small but devoted team of friends vetting the delegates. Ahmad Bagja, Hasyim's favoured candidate, ended only slightly ahead of him at 32 votes, and Salahuddin Wahid, who had looked like a potential winner, received only 78, not enough to pass to the second round. The big winners were Said and Slamet, with 178 and 158 votes respectively. In the second round, Said increased his margin and garnered a solid majority of 294 against Slamet's 201. This outcome did not correspond with anyone's calculations based on the prior commitments of delegates, suggesting that many changed their minds during the five days of the congress, or even in the last hours before the voting.

Forming the new board

The Rois Aam and the general chairperson are the only officers of the organisation who are directly elected by the congress. According to the by-laws, both choose their own deputies and together these four, assisted by a number of electors (formatur) 'chosen by the Congress from among those present,' are charged with selecting the other members of the Syuriyah and the Tanfidziyah. Usually care is taken that all factions and groups present at the congress are represented, even if only in some honorary capacity without real influence. Having left little to chance, Hasyim Muzadi had made sure that the final session was chaired by a trusted loyalist, who proposed three electors and had them quickly and without any discussion accepted by acclamation. This enabled Hasyim to continue playing a role, through at least one of these electors, in the final phase, which took place behind closed doors during the weeks that followed the congress.

The trend towards a more fundamentalist and anti-liberal version of traditionalist Islam appears to be reversed

Kiai Sahal chose as his deputy Kiai Musthofa Bisri, who enjoys broad respect within NU as well as outside the organisation. Hasyim Muzadi was also appointed to the Syuriyah, initially even as another deputy Rois Aam, but after some protest as an ordinary member. Said Aqil's choice of a deputy was more controversial: As'ad Said Ali is a well-known NU personality, who wrote an interesting book on the organisation, but he also happens to be a deputy chief of the State Intelligence Agency, BIN. Many NU people used to be proud of having one of their own in a high position in BIN, but the appointment of this high intelligence officer as the deputy chairperson of the organisation gave many others cause for worry over NU's independence. Nor was this the only political appointment: Jusuf Kalla was given an honorary position as a counsellor (mustasyar), as was Jakarta's governor, Fauzi Bowo. A certain Velix Wanggai, who had no prior connection with NU but was a personal assistant to President Yudhoyono, was also named in an advisory position and only later withdrawn after a wave of protest.

Unlike most other contenders, Ulil was not offered a formal position in any section of the board, but another prominent NGO activist, Imam Azis, the founder of LKiS and Syarikat, was appointed to the Tanfidziyah. (Another NGO activist, Hilmy Ali Yafie, was named but resigned out of protest against political interference in the process.) Two other intellectuals commonly identified as 'liberals', Masdar Mas'udi and Mohammad Machasin, retained their positions in the Syuriyah. The composition of the board represents some uneasy compromises and accommodations; various political interests are entrenched in it. Yet the trend towards a more fundamentalist and anti-liberal version of traditionalist Islam appears to be reversed.

Prospects for the progressives

Said Aqil Siradj is himself not close to the liberal and progressive activists of the younger generation, but he has a track record of expressing broad-minded and tolerant views and socialising easily with people of different social and religious backgrounds. Although he obtained a doctorate in Saudi Arabia, he has had good words to say about Shi'ism and has shown an interest in Sufism as well as contemporary philosophical writers. He does not appear to have a grand vision of where to take NU, but he is likely to allow much internal diversity and defend religious tolerance and pluralism.

Kiai Sahal Mahfudh once was heralded by younger activists as the man who could help make traditionalist religious thought relevant to modern social issues, a kiai who was also an intellectual. He was one of a handful of senior kiai who in the 1990s patronised a series of workshops that brought together kiai, NGO activists, and academic experts to speak on contemporary problems and attempt to develop a new religious discourse capable of engaging with such issues. (Masdar had been the driving force and chief creative intellect of these workshops, but it was Kiai Sahal who shielded him against the criticism of more conservative kiai.) Since his election as the Rois Aam in 1999, however, he has not done or said much that was remarkable. He was very critical of Hasyim Muzadi's political ambitions but had stopped short of an open confrontation. Since 2000 he has also been the general chairperson of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia and, though he was not directly involved in its notorious anti-liberal fatwas of 2005, he never made a critical comment on them either.

Given Kiai Sahal's age (72) and apparently poor health, the position of his deputy is potentially crucial. Musthofa Bisri (65) is a colourful person, a poet and amateur painter as well as a kiai, and representative of the most tolerant and broad-minded strand of traditionalist Islam. A lifelong friend of Abdurrahman Wahid, he shared many of the latter's views though not his eccentricities, and he is the man to whom young NU activists look for moral support and inspiration. Moreover, he is Ulil's father-in-law, and appears to generally support his son-in-law even while occasionally disagreeing with him.

With this new board, NU is poised to seek a new balance between the conservatism and politicisation of the past period and the search for a new religious discourse of the 1990s. Various political interests are represented in the board, which may endanger the organisation's independence, but things could have been much worse. The slide towards fundamentalist and anti-liberal religious views is unlikely to continue under the new board and it may even be reversed. Whereas the previous leadership mistrusted the young intellectuals and NGO activists who constituted the progressive vanguard of NU in the 1990s and marginalised them, the new leadership is likely to allow them a larger role. Moreover, the 2010 congress has shown that the younger intellectuals and activists have gained some support among the rank-and-file of the organisation and at various levels of leadership.

Martin van Bruinessen (m.vanbruinessen@uu.nl) is chair for the comparative study of contemporary Muslim societies at the University of Utrecht.

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SBY’s Timor History

SBY - top graduate 1973

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), like many of his generation of former military men, has a Timor history. Australian researcher Ernie Chamberlain shows that, while SBY may not have been in the very first wave of the 7 December 1975 Indonesian military invasion, he was on active duty in Timor in those early years of the occupation which had such catastrophic consequences for the Timorese population and resistance. While the detailed story of SBY’s roles inside Timor is yet to be told, what follows sketches the beginning of his Timor history.

Chamberlain writes:

In his senior year (1973) at the Akabri military academy at Magelang, Bambang Yudhoyono was the Dandivkortar (“top cadet”) – overseeing 3,000 cadets. On graduation in November 1973, as the “top student” among the 987 graduates (Prabowo Subianto, by the way, graduated the following year in third place), he was presented with the Bintang Adhi Makayasa medal personally by then President Soeharto.
From Akabri, he was posted as a platoon commander to Kostrad’s 330 Airborne/Raider Battalion (Commander 3 Platoon, “A” Company) serving in the period “1974-76″. That unit’s history website notes that the battalion saw service in Timor in “1975-1976″.
Indonesian journalist and author Hendro Subroto has written on 330 Battalion’s operations in several of his works. In particular, two battalions of 330 Battalion’s formation – the 17th Airborne Brigade/”Satgas B” – parachuted onto the Baucau airfield on 10 December 1975, but 330 Battalion (commanded by Major Syukur) did not arrive in Baucau from Kupang until 14 December in an airlanded operation utilising civil-type aircraft. Soon after landing, 330 Battalion led the ABRI advance south to Viqueque – meeting quite stiff Falintil opposition led by Sabika in the Lariguto/Ossu area.

SBY’s Timor entrance
But was Yudhoyono with 330 Battalion in Timor in December 1975 ? I think not.
Firstly, Hendro Subroto is an inveterate “name dropper”. In relating operations in Timor, he invariably highlights the presence/role of any later-to-become-senior ABRI officers. He makes no mention of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Baucau/Viqueque operation of 330 Battalion. Moreover, Yudhoyono reportedly attended English language training at the US military’s Defence Language Institute in Texas in late 1975/early 1976, followed by Airborne and Ranger training at Fort Benning in 1975-1976.
He apparently returned to Indonesia in mid-1976 – deploying to Timor in August 1976 as a platoon commander in 305 Battalion (a month after his marriage to the daughter of Major General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo a renowned/infamous commander of the RPKAD and graduate of the Australian Army’s Staff College at Queenscliff, Victoria). While little is known about 305 Battalion’s activities in Timor in 1976-1977, it reportedly operated principally in Lautem.
Among his medals, Yudhoyono wears the Satya Lencana Seroja, 1976 (Operasi Seroja – Operation Lotus – was the name given to the major Indonesian military campaign in Timor from December 1975 to November 1979)

Other connections
As an aside, over the years, Bambang Yudhoyono has had several koneksi with the Australian military – and was a close friend of Lieutenant General Peter Leahy (former Chief of Army, and now a professor heading the University of Canberra’s National Security Institute). They were in the same class at the US Command and Staff College, Leavenworth in 1990-1991 (Leahy was the “top” foreign student, Bambang Yudhoyono was “No.2″). It was planned that Yudhoyono attend the year-long “one-star” ADF ACDSS course at Weston Creek (Canberra) in 1996 – but in November 1995, Yudhoyono was quite suddenly posted to Bosnia-Herzegovina as the Chief Military Observer of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

Sources:

Subroto, S., Operasi Udara di Timor Timor (Air Operations in East Timor), Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 2005, pp.107-197.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono

Military Academy website: http://www.akmil.ac.id

Battallion 330 website: http://www.yoniflinud330.mil.id/

More SBY biographical details: http://www.tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/s/susilo-b-yudhoyono/biografi/keluarga.shtml

Ernie Chamberlain is a retired Australian brigadier, having served for 36 years – including as Australian Defence Attache in Jakarta in the mid-1990s. Since retirement in 1998, he has spent some years in Timor – including advising Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues and F-FDTL commander Taur Matan Ruak on defence policy and planning (2004-05).

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RI should not use reactive nationalism against Malaysia : observer - Antara

Image by tesKing via Flickr

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - A socio-economic observer has warned Indonesian people not to be trapped in what he called "reactive nationalism" or "suicidal nationalism" in responding to the various provocations by Malaysia.

"What we need in facing Malaysia is common-sense nationalism," Fajroel Rachman, chairman of the non-governmental organization "Pedoman Indonesia" said here Monday commenting on the neighboring country`s provocations against Indonesia ranging from making claims on Indonesian arts and culture to persecution of Indonesian migrant workers (TKI).

According to Rachman, the preferred way to settle the problem with Malaysia should be negotiations.

Therefore, Rachman expressed disagreement if the Indonesian people later take emotional or provocative steps let alone armed actions under the once-popular slogan of "Crush Malaysia".

He stressed that the government should immediately form a special team to be led directly by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Foreign Minister acting as chairman and assisted by legal team, artists and cultural experts.

In the meantime, about the Indonesian migrant workers who experienced the persecution in Malaysia, Rachman said, it should be delegated to the Malaysian courts, but the Indonesia Embassy in Kuala Lumpur must also provide physical protection and law to the migrant workers.

Fadjroel further said that Malaysia is only a small and monarchic country that is not too concerned about human right issues, while Indonesia is a large and democratic country.

"If Indonesia is well managed, then our competitors are only China, India and Brazil, not Malaysia. So, do not be trapped," he added.

In the meantime, the Indonesian minister of culture and tourism Jero Wacik said on Thursday (Aug.27) that Malaysia had offered an apology over the "Pendet" traditional dance controversy.

"Just now in the afternoon the Malaysian minister of tourism called me to offer an apology over the Pendet case," he said.

The minister said the apology was offered in connection with the depiction without permit of a Balinese "Pendet" welcome dance in the Enigmatic Malaysia tourism advertisement program broadcast in the Discovery Channel.

He admitted that the apology was offered verbally but he hoped an official reply would be given by the Malaysian government to the Indonesian government following its complaint over the issue submitted recently.(*)

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Indonesian Antiterror Victories

It looks like Indonesian police just missed catching Southeast Asia’s most wanted terror suspect over the weekend. But the operation to hunt down Noordin Mohamed Top and the related defusing of a bomb plot aimed at President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono still speak well of that country’s counterterror efforts.

Indonesia’s elite counterterrorism force, Detachment 88, has been hunting Noordin since the 2002 Bali bombings. The Malaysian-born terrorist is the head of a small splinter faction of al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiya and is thought to be the mastermind of a string of attacks culminating in last month’s Jakarta hotel bombings. On Saturday, Indonesian authorities raided a farmhouse several hundred miles from Jakarta and another house near the capital, arresting five and killing three. Despite early reports Noordin was among the dead, he’s probably still alive. But Jakarta is getting closer to nabbing him.

This weekend’s raids will go down as another victory in the larger war on terror even though Noordin is on the loose. Detachment 88 has rounded up hundreds of Jemaah Islamiya members since 2002, including Jemaah Islamiya leader Abu Dujana in 2007, to the point where the group may no longer function as an effective terrorist operation. (Noordin’s splinter faction is the exception, and even then has only about 30 members.) Success breeds success: Suspects arrested in the wake of the July 17 hotel attack in Jakarta tipped off authorities to the location of Noordin’s safe house.

Just as importantly, police thwarted an apparent assassination plot against President Yudhoyono Saturday when they recovered hundreds of kilograms of explosive materials from another house near Jakarta. Terrorists allegedly intended to set off an explosion near one of the president’s houses or his motorcade. It’s unclear whether they would have been able to pull off such an act, but last month’s hotel bombings showcased how sophisticated Indonesia’s terrorists can be.

One important factor that has helped Indonesia’s fight against terrorism is that the government has thrown itself wholeheartedly into the effort. Mr. Yudhoyono extended his “highest gratitude and respect” to the police for their “brilliant achievement” on Saturday. Detachment 88 is among the best-funded police units in the country. Jakarta has also embraced the help of Australia and the U.S., which have helped train Indonesia’s antiterror forces.

Now Indonesia’s political class needs to step up its fight on the ideas front. Up to now, Jakarta has been tolerant of radical teaching and preaching despite its successes arresting terrorists. Witness the release in 2006 of Abu Bakir Bashar, convicted of conspiracy in the Bali bombing and well known for his radical teachings, or last year’s antipornography law passed as a sop to Islamic parties. That may be starting to change after religious parties lost ground in this year’s elections. There are signs Mr. Yudhoyono’s next cabinet appointments may take Islamic-party politicians out of key posts.

Mr. Yudhoyono won election in 2004 in part of a platform of security, and he won re-election earlier this year with an even larger mandate to defend Indonesia’s tradition of moderate Islam. This weekend’s events show how far Indonesia has come in the fight against terror, and how much more remains to be done. Mr. Yudhoyono would do well to stay the course.

Plot to Kill Indonesian President Foiled

By SETH MYDANS

MANILA — The police in Indonesia said Saturday that they had foiled plans by an Islamist group to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, but they declined to confirm news reports that they had killed Southeast Asia’s most wanted terrorism suspect in a separate raid.

A leading expert on terrorism, Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, said she doubted local reports that the terrorism suspect, Noordin Muhammad Top, had been killed in a 16-hour raid on a militant hide-out outside Jakarta.

Police officials said that they could not immediately confirm whether the person who had been killed was Mr. Noordin, and that they had sent a body to Jakarta for DNA testing.

As confused and contradictory reports emerged, it remained unclear whether Mr. Noordin had been in the house at the time of the raid, whether he had escaped or whether he had possibly been arrested beforehand.

“What we do know is that the police intercepted this likely attack, and they get incredible kudos for that,” Ms. Jones said, referring to the assassination attempt.

But as to the raid on the house outside of Jakarta, she said, “What I’m pretty convinced of is that the person inside the house was not Noordin Top and the person who was killed was not Noordin Top.”

The National Police chief, Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri, tried to dampen the rumors.

“We could not yet disclose the identity of the killed man,” he said at a news conference. “After the DNA test, we will announce it, based on facts, not based on speculation.”

The two suspects killed in the second raid, in the West Java town of Bekasi, were believed to be linked to Mr. Noordin.

General Hendarso said an accomplice had told the police that two would-be suicide bombers were planning to detonate explosives in a truck at the president’s home this month. He said a truck was found rigged with explosives, along with bomb-making material.

He said the location was significant “because it is situated just a 12-minutes drive from the president’s residence.

“Our president was a target,” he said.

The president told reporters he had been briefed about a counterterrorism operation by the police, though he did not mention Mr. Noordin.

“I extend my highest gratitude and respect to the police for their brilliant achievement in this operation,” he said.

With the disarray and decline of the region’s leading Islamist terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah, Mr. Noordin had come to be seen as the region’s most dangerous militant, operating a splinter faction that claimed direct links to Al Qaeda, Ms. Jones said.

He is blamed for suicide bomb attacks last month on two hotels in Jakarta that killed seven people, ending a four-year pause in terrorist strikes in Indonesia.

“There is no question that he was involved with the bombings in Jakarta,” Ms. Jones said. “He is certainly the person who has masterminded every major attack in Indonesia beginning with the Marriott Hotel bombings in 2003.”

A Malaysian citizen, Mr. Noordin claimed in a video in 2005 to be Al Qaeda’s representative in Southeast Asia and said he was carrying out attacks on Western civilians to avenge Muslim deaths in Afghanistan.

Indonesia Poll Result Challenged

One of the defeated candidates in Indonesia's presidential election is to challenge the result, a spokesman says.

Former president Megawati Sukarnoputri believed that there were "unresolved legal issues" over the vote, said her party spokesman Gayus Lumbuun.

Mrs Megawati secured 26.8% of the vote, compared to incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's 60.8%.

A spokesman for the third candidate, Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, has said he will challenge the voter lists.

Mr Kalla received 12.4% of the vote in the 8 July poll.

Mrs Megawati boycotted the formal announcement of results from the election commission on Saturday.

"Because there are still unresolved legal issues, we are rejecting the presidential election results from the KPU (election commission)," Gayus Lumbuun said.

He said the campaign would lodge a challenge with the Constitutional Court.

Profile: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Profiles: Indonesia poll candidates

Both defeated candidates had alleged that the voter lists were flawed in the run-up to the elections, amid claims that duplicate names and those of dead people were appearing on the electoral rolls.

A spokesman for Mr Kalla, meanwhile, said that he would appeal over the voter list issue, but had not yet decided whether to accept the official results, AFP reported.

Indonesia's poll watchdog acknowledged the problems.

Election Supervisory Body chief Nur Hidayat Sardini said that "there were many violations", but said the polls were "considered a success".

Mr Yudhoyono said the candidates had the right to an appeal.

He was elected president in 2004 and Indonesians have, correspondents say, been impressed by his ability to manage the economy and clamp down on corruption.

Many see him as someone who has turned the economy around and brought much-needed stability and security to the country.

Indonesia's President Looks Ahead as Vote Nears

By TOM WRIGHT

Reuters

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife, center, greet supporters at a campaign rally on Saturday in the capital of Jakarta.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- On the eve of a national election this week, Indonesia is re-emerging as one of the world's hottest developing economies, a remarkable turnaround for a country that was once widely viewed as a basket case.

Despite the global financial crisis, Indonesia's economy is on track to grow nearly 4% this year, making it one of only a handful of major economies -- including China and India -- that International Monetary Fund expects to expand in 2009.

Its stock market is up 50% for the year, and companies including Volkswagen AG and British American Tobacco PLC are making new investments there.

Much of the credit goes to Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former army general who is widely expected to win re-election after five years in power. Under his watch, the government has stamped out Islamic terrorism and ended its civil war in the resource-rich province of Aceh. He has brought state spending under control and launched a popular anti-corruption drive, landing a number of senior politicians and central bank officials, including one whose daughter is married to Mr. Yudhoyono's son, in jail.

But critics say Mr. Yudhoyono will have to do more to attack corruption if the nation is to reach its potential of China-style economic growth rates of over 8%. Last year, China attracted six times more foreign direct investment than Indonesia. Foreign businesses say that a corrupt legal system and bureaucracy are major deterrents to doing business in Indonesia.

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Indonesia's Election

In a rare hour-long interview on Sunday at his home -- a sprawling estate outside Jakarta that has a library of 13,000 volumes -- Mr. Yudhoyono said that if he's re-elected, he will fill his next cabinet with technocrats, rather than hand out positions to a wide range of under-qualified leaders from rival political parties, as he did to placate opponents in his first term. He acknowledged that in the past his government has included businessmen with conflicts of interest that made it harder for him to rein in corruption and push reform -- a practice that he pledged to end in a second term.

"Five years from now, I have to complete my effort in reforming Indonesia," Mr. Yudhoyono said. "Good governance, bureaucratic reform, the anti-corruption campaign all have to be intensified."

A broad-shouldered man who dresses neatly in bureaucrats' safari suits or silk batik shirts, Mr. Yudhoyono, 59, is an unlikely reformer. He is a career military officer in a country where the military is widely associated with corruption and human rights abuses.

In a poll of 3,000 people released on Sunday by Lembaga Survei Indonesia, 63% of respondents said they will vote for Mr. Yudhoyono in the presidential election set for Wednesday. Twenty percent opted for his closest rival, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has been pushing an anti-free trade stance. Trailing a distant third is Jusuf Kalla, chairman of the Golkar Party.

The question is whether Mr. Yudhoyono could carry his law-and-order campaign to a new level in a second term, putting Indonesia -- the world's fourth-largest country with 240 million people -- on a more sustainable path as one of the world's top emerging-market economies. Mr. Yudhoyono has taken a number of steps in recent weeks -- including choosing a well-respected Wharton-educated economist with few political ties as his new running mate -- that suggest he'll press for bigger changes during a second term.

In the interview, Mr. Yudhoyono said he would protect only a few crucial industries such as the local rice market, to make sure food security is maintained, but said he is otherwise committed to free trade and investment as a way to raise incomes in a country filled with natural resources.

For more than a decade, this ethnically-diverse archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands -- covering a distance greater than Los Angeles to New York -- was known for corruption and chronic instability, with one of the world's longest-running civil wars. Islamic terrorists struck Western targets in Indonesia with impunity, and foreign investors mostly steered clear. Indonesia seemed so unstable at times that some Western analysts feared it would turn into another Pakistan.

Recently, its fortunes are changing. Last month, a Morgan Stanley analyst report suggested Indonesia should be added to the famous "BRIC" grouping of fast-growing emerging markets that now includes Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Mr. Yudhoyono's reputation as a reformer in the Muslim world's largest democracy is far from assured. Indonesia's cosy business elite has barely changed since the fall of former authoritarian president Suharto in 1998. The judiciary and civil service remain graft-ridden, according to advocacy group Transparency International, despite Mr. Yudhoyono's personal reputation for probity. Without more serious changes, investors fear the recent surge in interest in the country will fizzle.

Despite his anti-corruption drive, Mr. Yudhoyono remains part of the nation's elite, making him cautious in going after the most powerful politicians, judges and other government officials involved in graft, critics say. Last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a report detailing continued abuses by military special forces, including rape and torture, in Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua.

"He's very much part of the system," says Michael Buehler, a fellow at Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute. "If you look at civil service reform, nothing has happened in the past five years."

Mr. Yudhoyono hit back at critics who charge he has been slow at bringing reform. He says they underestimate the enormity of Indonesia's problems of graft, which could take 10 years more to clean up, and the need to weigh decisions carefully to bolster respect for the nation's laws and Constitution, which in the past were often disregarded. "That's the way we have to run the country, it's not a small company where you can make decisions right away," he said.

And while acknowledging that army reform isn't yet complete, Mr. Yudhoyono insisted there have been no major violations of human rights or other systematic repressions under his watch.

Like Mr. Suharto, who was also an army general, Mr. Yudhoyono can seem aloof and stiff in public, preferring to read from prepared scripts than answer questions off-the-cuff from the media. He often deliberates so long over decisions that cabinet meetings have been known to run all day without reaching a decision.

But he is also considered to be an intellectual who has shown a commitment to democracy and rule of law that's somewhat unusual for Indonesia. After declaring independence from the Netherlands in 1945, Indonesia became one of the world's most impoverished economies under its first president, an independence hero named Sukarno. Mr. Suharto took over in 1965 and presided over growth fueled by Western capital and foreign aid, but also ruled the country as his own fiefdom. In 2007, a report by the U.N. and World Bank alleged Mr. Suharto stole more state funds than any other modern world leader -- as much as $35 billion. Rights groups documented a range of abuses, including military-led massacres in East Timor, which voted in 1999 to split from Indonesia in a U.N.-backed referendum after a 24-year civil war.

Mr. Suharto, who died in 2008, justified his practices by arguing that Indonesia would disintegrate without an authoritarian figure at the helm. This seemed all the more true after Mr. Suharto's government collapsed in the wake of the 1998 Asian financial crisis. A series of ineffective civilian leaders left the country adrift and foreign investors fled.

Mr. Yudhoyono appears to have broken that mold. Born into a poor family whose father was a low-ranking military official, he excelled in studies from an early age and won a place at Indonesia's prestigious military academy, where he graduated top of his class.

From early on, his approach to soldiering often put him at odds with army colleagues. Upon taking command of Battalion 744, a feared infantry unit with a reputation for brutality in East Timor in the 1980s, he moved to end the common practice of summarily executing prisoners.

On one occasion, he intervened to stop troops from killing a resistance fighter who was badly injured in a skirmish, ordering that he instead receive hospital treatment, according to an account of the incident in Mr. Yudhoyono's official biography. Former senior generals confirm the account and say Mr. Yudhoyono was criticized by some for these unusual tactics.

He studied several times in the U.S. on joint-training programs and served as a top United Nations commander in Bosnia. In 1990, he spent a year at the U.S. Army's staff college in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where officials conducted classes on the role of the army in the U.S. and its separation from politics.

"He saw how the United States could be a superpower and democratic," says T.B. Silalahi, a former general who was Mr. Yudhoyono's senior in rank at staff training college in the 1990s and is now a presidential national security adviser for Mr. Yudhoyono.

By the mid-1990s, a pattern in Mr. Yudhoyono's leadership was emerging in which he stayed loyal to the country's establishment but pressed for more flexibility and reform from within. He became head of the army's political wing, an army staff position that oversaw the secondment of generals to the civilian government's cabinet and played a role in policymaking.

When tensions between pro-democracy student activists and Mr. Suharto's government reached a boiling point in 1998, with three days of rioting in which hundreds of people were killed, Mr. Yudhoyono backed the government. But unlike most other generals, he tried to help mediate by organizing televised forums with pro-democracy groups to reduce tensions. There was an ethos that "rebellions must be crushed militarily. I didn't agree," Mr. Yudhoyono said.

After Mr. Suharto stepped down, Mr. Yudhoyono took a lead role in the new government headed by Mr. Suharto's last vice president, B.J. Habibie, and drew up a blueprint for army reforms that were quickly enacted. They included measures aimed at withdrawing the military from domestic politics -- including forcing generals to resign before taking up cabinet positions -- and removing the country's national police from army control.

Mr. Yudhoyono, who left the army for a full-time career in politics in 1999, also grew frustrated by the country's low reputation abroad. The following year, as the nation's top political and security minister under then-President Abdurrahman Wahid, he was summoned by the U.N. Security Council in New York after an episode in which an Indonesian military-backed militia attacked a U.N. office near East Timor, killing three U.N. personnel.

Mr. Yudhoyono defended his country, amid angry responses by President Bill Clinton and other world leaders, telling U.N. officials that sending a U.N. peacekeeping force would be meddling in Indonesia's affairs. But he also promised to create a timetable for reining in the militias and privately told advisers he was deeply embarrassed by the affair.

"The world had a problem with Indonesia because of East Timor," Mr. Yudhoyono said in the interview. World leaders saw the nation as a "repressive country in which internal security problems were resolved militarily."

Indonesia was in chaos on other fronts, too. Hard-line Islamist groups that had been forced into exile by Mr. Suharto but were able to return after the end of military-backed rule plotted terrorist attacks on Western targets, culminating in the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed 202 people.

Meanwhile, decentralization laws designed to unravel some of Mr. Suharto's power network instead led to near anarchy in the provinces, where newly-empowered local politicians became extremely wealthy handing out permits to cut down trees and mine inside national parks.

Mr. Yudhoyono coordinated the setting up of a U.S.-funded anti-terrorism police unit called Detachment 88 that made scores of arrests over the next few years, including those of the Bali bombers, all but destroying a local Islamic terrorist network linked to al Qaeda.

In 2004, backed by a group of disgruntled liberal former generals, Mr. Yudhoyono resigned from the government of Ms. Megawati, a daughter of Mr. Sukarno, to stand in Indonesia's first direct presidential elections. Mr. Yudhoyono, who wasn't implicated in a number of corruption scandals that plagued Ms. Megawati's tenure, promised voters he wouldn't shy away from taking tough decisions to end Indonesia's security and economic woes. The voters responded, electing him in 2004 in a landslide victory.

His strategy, he now says, was to identify a few key areas where Indonesia needed to act -- including lack of respect for the law, reining in corruption and restoring overall economic and political stability -- while recognizing that some other areas couldn't be fixed right away.

Within a year, he signed a deal to end 30 years of fighting in the province of Aceh by agreeing to give it special autonomy within Indonesia and more power to run its own affairs, despite opposition from hard-line generals who feared compromise would cause Indonesia's other minorities to demand independence -- something that hasn't happened.

"I did convince military officers we had to change," Mr. Yudhoyono said. "It's not that we necessarily had to conduct military operations all the time."

On the economic front, high global oil prices were wreaking havoc on the state budget, with generous consumer fuel subsidies adding up to $7 billion in 2004. Foreign investors were fleeing the stock market and local currency on fears the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The government raised fuel prices twice in 2005, sparking street protests. Opposition politicians and NGOs slammed the moves as anti-poor and inflationary. But Mr. Yudhoyono appeared regularly in public and mustered academic experts to point out fuel prices disproportionately benefited the middle classes who drive cars, while leaving less for education and health care.

To balance the fuel-price increase, Mr. Yudhoyono instituted a cash-transfer program that reached a third of households. The government has spent more than $2 billion in cash handouts, subsidized primary education and other benefits, paid for in part from fuel subsidy savings.

The president appointed well-respected technocrats who have run a tight economic ship. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a former International Monetary Fund executive director, has presided over a reduction in public debt to 30% of gross domestic product from 60% when Mr. Yudhoyono came to power. The economy, helped by a commodity boom and healthy consumer spending, grew by over 5% annually between 2004 and last year.

"The fact he's going after corruption is a very good sign," said Mark Mobius, a Hong Kong-based executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management LLC, who has covered emerging markets for over 40 years. "The $64 million question is whether he will continue to carry that out. They're up against a lot of competition in the race for investment from around the world. They've really got to move forward."

Mr. Yudhoyono's ability to drive change is now greater, his supporters argue. In part because of his success over the past several years, Mr. Yudhoyono's Democrat Party is today the largest in Parliament, which means he can more easily press through reform legislation, if he chooses.

"I've tried to transform Indonesia," he said. His goal, he says, is "to be as any other normal democratic countries."

-- Yayu Yuniar contributed to this article.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com