The Political Movement of Kyai by Nihayatul Wafiroh

Kyai’s role in election politics reached its peak in 1999 when Gus Dur was elected to be a president of Indonesia. Actually, as Cliffford Geertz mentioned that Kyai has been playing important roles in Indonesian politic since Soekarno era. Indeed Allan A Samson notes that the case of Masyumi party indicated the involvement of Kyai in Indonesian political sphere. I do agree with what Geertz argued that there is a change of Kyais’ role. Before independent Kyai were known as religious leaders. The position of Kyai in community is important since usually community always refers to Kyai when they have any problems not only in religious things but also in daily problems. Therefore, Kyai have power in their community. In the past, Kyai used the power to manage people in order to ignite the spirit to fight against colonialists.

After independent, Kyai play their power to receive the support from the followers in politic. One of examples is the case of Nahdlatul Ulama. Many people believe that one reason of Gus Dur could be a president since not only his capability but also he has big followers in NU community. Another example is Kyai Haji Hasyim Muzadi. Some NU members trust that Muzadi has already brought NU into politics too deep. As a result, many groups argue that NU loses the independence as a religious organization. In election 2004, Muzadi run to be a vice president candidate of Megawati Soekarno Putri. I could say that many Kyai supported Muzadi’s decision and they became the campaign members of Muzadi. However, I think that the number of groups who disagreed with Muzadi were bigger. Although Muzadi was the leader of NU, it was not guarantee that he would receive votes from all NU members. Finally, Muzadi lost in the election. In the recent election, 2009, NU leaders gave an instruction to vote Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto to be a president and vice president. However, not all NU members followed this instruction and Jusuf Kalla lost from the election.

From these examples, I could figure out that the power of Kyai is not as strong as before. People already have their own choices. Kyais’ recommendation does not give any guarantee that Kyai’s followers will go after. I think that the changing of Kyais’ position is because the quality of Kyai is not like before. People, in my opinion, want that Kyai are to be pure Kyai. It means that Kyai do not deal with politic. In fact, politic, in mostly Indonesians’ opinion, is a bad thing, so dealing with politic will reduce Kyai’s politic and charismatic. So, how is the ideal of Kyai ?