The Straits Times
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Gus Dur: A champion of pluralism
John McBeth, Senior Writer
ICON of religious tolerance, enemy of radical Islam and champion of women
and ethnic minorities, history will always be kind to the late Abdurrahman
Wahid - whether Indonesia declares him a national hero or not.
But he was also an enigma, whose disastrous presidency ended with him trying
to get the military to head off his impeachment by the House of
Representatives, sorely tarnishing his reputation as a democrat in the
process. Indeed, as analyst Marcus Meitzner points out, his greatest legacy
as a politician may be the Indonesian elite's subsequent reformation of the
political system to ensure a similar scenario was never repeated.
I got my first taste of Mr Abdurrahman'
mid-1990s during interviews over cups of sugary tea at the run-down
headquarters of Nahdlatul Ulama, the mass Muslim organisation he headed with
an iron grip from 1984 to 1999. Mostly, it was perfectly rational political
discourse, but there would always be a moment when he dropped a piece of
outrageously salacious gossip into the conversation that seemed totally out
of place.
Of course, the man known as Gus Dur had a wicked sense of humour and he may
have had a good laugh as I left, still wondering whether he actually
believed what he had told me.
But after a stroke in early 1998, those seemingly irrational moments became
more pronounced. Aides complained that instead of taking sensible advice, he
would often listen only to people who had a juicy story to tell.
Mr Abdurrahman did not play a key role in then-President Suharto's downfall
five months later. His alliance with opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri
worried Suharto, but Mr Abdurrahman did nothing to actively oppose him. In
the end, with Suharto gone, the manner in which he subsequently became
Indonesia's first democratically-
interesting analysis than many of the disappointments that attended his 21
months in power.
In mid-1999, when I interviewed him at his house in the southern Jakarta
suburb of Ciganjur, he was not feeling well and spent the hour lying on his
bed, a Dutch widow clenched between his bare knees and his face half buried
in a pillow.
As I strained to hear what he was saying, he took me aback by confidently
predicting he would win the October presidential run-off in the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR). Frankly, it seemed a lot of bluster, for Ms
Megawati looked to be a shoo-in after her Indonesian Democratic Party for
Struggle (PDI-P) had won a commanding
33 per cent of the vote in the July legislative elections. But by getting
MPR chairman Amien Rais to endorse him, the wily Mr Abdurrahman calculated
only too well what would happen next.
Without understanding the consequences of what it was doing, PDI-P led the
vote rejecting incumbent B.J. Habibie's accountability speech, killing off
his election bid and turning the contest into
a two-horse race. The former ruling Golkar party, already split over the
unpopular Dr Habibie, joined the Muslim
parties in the centre (where Mr Abdurrahman had his base of support) and Ms
Megawati was doomed.
Mr Abdurrahman'
his plan to replace the the palace security guard with police officers, left
him fighting political enemies on all fronts and eventually led to
widespread disillusionment with civilian governance.
While much has been made of his stroke, it was clearly his blindness and his
inability to read the body language of those around him that made him
increasingly insecure and affected his previously acute sense of timing. For
many, his presidency was the lowest point in the post- Suharto era. With the
country still in turmoil following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, it
seemed the civilians were dropping the ball.
'He (Mr Abdurrahman) would always listen to your views - then he would
simply ignore them,' presidential spokesman Dharmawan Ronodipuro says of
that period. 'There were so many different facets to him.'
Two of Mr Abdurrahman'
the office itself and to remove discriminatory practices against ethnic
Chinese. But it is his earlier pre-presidential years that former
presidential secretary Ratih Hardjono likes to remember.
Despite what happened later, she still sees him as the first civilian leader
to broach the subject of democracy. 'He studied Suharto very carefully,' she
says. 'In a way he took on some of (Suharto's) personality in the way he
emulated some of his strategies.'
While Indonesians struggle to fine- tune a balanced assessment of Mr
Abdurrahman'
69-year-old president's standing on Islam.
What is worrying for many people is that with his death - and that of fellow
Muslim intellectual Nurcholish Madjid in 2005 - there is now no one of real
stature to speak out against the way the central and local governments
continue to give ground to Islamic extremism. Often, the culprits are
politicians, who perceive the benefits to be gained from currying favour
with fundamentalist Muslim clerics.
Why they do that is unclear. Mr Abdurrahman may well have been the champion
of pluralism, but it is the voters themselves who have consistently shown in
three successive elections that they believe religion is not the business of
the state.
thane.cawdor@
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