Abdurrahman Wahid
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Image:Abdurrahman Wahid.jpg Abdurrahman Wahid (also known as Gus Dur) (born August 4, 1940) was the President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, and leader of the National Awakening Party (PKB), which he founded after the fall of Suharto.
Born in Jombang, East Java, Wahid was educated in Indonesia, Egypt and Canada. He had long been a widely-respected and controversial Muslim cleric and leader of the Nahdatul Ulama before being elected President by the Indonesian parliament. He earned his controversy mostly from his sarcastic jokes and explicit talks. He is regarded as a very friendly and funny figure, as demonstrated by his affectionate nickname, "Gus Dur" ("Gus" is like brother or comrade, while "Dur" is taken from his name, Ab-'dur'-rahman). Back during Suharto's New Order era, although Gus Dur was seemingly moderate and non-confrontational in regards to the autocratic regime, he was in fact a slick and maverick opposition figure whose threat was taken seriously by President Suharto. During that period, Gus Dur represented one of the single most powerful threats to Suharto's authority, because the organization that he led, Nadhlatul Ulama, was Indonesia and the world's largest Muslim organization, with nearly 40 millions followers. Suharto repeatedly tried to remove Gus Dur from the helm of Nadhlatul Ulama and replace him with a more cooperative person, but all these attempts failed. This failure was due to Nadhlatul Ulama's strong conservative leadership traditions, and the enormous respect inspired by Gus Dur himself. Nahdatul Ulama had traditionally been led by the family members and descendants of Hasyim Asy'ari, founder of the mass movement (Gus Dur is the grandson of Asy'ari). By that time, Gus Dur had also become close friends with many Indonesia's leading figures, including non-Muslims such as the widely revered Jesuit priest Frans Magnis-Suseno and the late Catholic nationalist general Benny Moerdani.
In June 1999, Wahid's PKB entered the Parliamentary Elections. The PKB won 12% of the votes, with Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) winning 33% of the votes. However, this did not ensure Megawati's election as President, as the duty of electing the President and Vice President was at this stage still in the hands of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).
In October 1999, the MPR convened. Amien Rais, the MPR Chairman, created a coalition consisting of Muslim Parties and Golkar known as the Central Axis. This coalition nominated Wahid as President and he defeated Megawati in Indonesia's first democratic Presidential election. Upon hearing this, Megawati's supporters began widespread rioting. To halt the rioting, Wahid made sure that Megawati was elected Vice President.
Because of serious illness (he has had multiple strokes that have left him nearly blind) and unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, he was impeached in July 2001 by a political coalition led by his vice-president and the replacing President, Megawati Sukarnoputri. A major portion of Indonesia's civil society movement opposed Gus Dur's impeachment, viewing it as a transparent attempt by corrupt remnants of Suharto's New Order, the military and Megawati's party to block the process of reform initiated by Gus Dur.
Despite his seeming inattention to governmental issues, Gus Dur succeeded in decentralizing many aspects of the governance of Indonesia. He also repealed many of the laws that discriminated against the Indonesian Chinese and even went as far as acknowledging that his maternal grandmother was part Chinese. He dissolved the state Ministry of Information which stifled press freedom for decades, and encouraged the blossoming of intellectual and artistic activities. Although himself an outspoken proponent of liberty and tolerance, leftist intellectual activities also blossomed during Gus Dur's time in office, after having been harshly suppressed by the New Order for more than three decades. Socialist and Marxist books, Che Guevara posters, and leftist intellectual communities and groups flourished widely, probably as an euphoric reaction to the liberation from Suharto's repressive rule.
Despite his impeachment, Gus Dur is widely respected and still active in Indonesian politics, providing witty and often sarcastic commentary on Indonesian politics. He publicly admitted that he abstained from voting in the second round of 2004 Indonesian presidential election as a sign of protest against the General Election Committee (KPU) for disqualifying him from candidacy. He recently became one of the leaders of a political coalition called the United Resurrecting Archipelago (Koalisi Nusantara Bangkit Bersatu) along with other old figures such as former New Order General and Vice-President Try Sutrisno, former New Order and reformation period military leader Wiranto, and his impeacher Megawati Sukarnoputri and Megawati's husband Taufik Kiemas. The coalition was formed to criticize the policies of the current Indonesian government led by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla, especially related to the recent unpopular withdrawal of subsidies for the national selling-price of refined oil fuel (refined oil fuel business in the country is monopolized by government-owned company of 'Pertamina').
Gus Dur is the inspiration behind the Wahid Institute, a Jakarta-based nonprofit organization led by his daughter Yenni Wahid. He also serves as patron, member of the board of directors and senior advisor to LibForAll ("Liberty for All") Foundation, whose mission is to reduce religious extremism and discredit terrorism worldwide. Among numerous other writings, he is the author of a seminal article published in the Wall Street Journal on December 30th, 2005 ("Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam") in which he called on "people of good will of every faith and nation" to unite to defeat the ideology of religious hatred that underlies and animates terrorism.
External links
| Presidents of Indonesia | ||
| Preceded by: Jusuf Habibie (1998 – 1999) | Abdurrahman Wahid (1999 – 2001) | Followed by: Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001 – 2004) |
| Politics of Indonesia | ||
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