EASTERN INDONESIA: ISLAMIC VOTERS NOT SWAYED BY RELIGIOUS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 SURABAYA 000068 SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT FOR EAP, EAP/MTS, INR E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PHUM KISL KCOR ID SUBJECT: EASTERN INDONESIA: ISLAMIC VOTERS NOT SWAYED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP; NON-JAVANESE UNMOVED BY KALLA'S MESSAGE SURABAYA 00000068 001.2 OF 002 This message is sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Presidential candidate Vice President Jusuf Kalla struggled to burnish his image as the choice of Islamic and non-Javanese religious voters during the campaign. However, early results suggest voters from Indonesia's largest Islamic organizations did not heed their leaders' calls to support Jusuf Kalla as the candidate most representative of Islamic values. Voting patterns from the Presidential election are the latest examples of the decline in political influence of religious leaders and Islamic institutions. Kalla's courtship of Muslim voters on Java in turn alienated Christian voters off Java, and undermined his efforts to position himself as the candidate of ethnic minorities. End Summary Kalla's Calculus -------------- ¶2. (SBU) During the Presidential election campaign, Jusuf Kalla tried to parlay his family's ties to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, to attract Islamic voters. NU, for its part, embraced Kalla and his running mate General Wiranto as NU's presidential candidates. Days before the election, East Java's Surya Daily carried a full-page, full-color endorsement of Kalla by Hasym Muzadi, the head of national NU. Muzadi's endorsement called for NU members to abandon their neutrality in the election and support Kalla. This unprecedented endorsement by NU was a very public test of NU's political clout -- but it appears to have failed An implied endorsement on election eve by Din Syamsudin, head of Muhammadiayah, Indonesia's second largest Islamic organization was less official but no less clear. ¶3. (SBU) Exit polls showed the Kalla-Wiranto ticket garnered less than 8 percent of the vote in East Java, the NU heartland. As they did in the 2008 East Java Governor's race, NU voters dismissed the instructions of their Kiais (religious leaders) and voted for the candidate of their choice. Political scientist Prof. Kacung Marijan of Airlangga University said this shows that NU's clerics can no longer deliver the votes of their followers. Former East Java NU Chair and failed Vice Governor candidate, Ali Maschan Moesa predicted in 2008 that NU's votes would not go to any single candidate for the foreseeable future. ¶4. (SBU) The Kalla-Wiranto ticket was soundly rejected even in polling stations near four nationally famous Islamic boarding schools in East Java, including Tebuireng, home base of former president Gus Dur and his brother, Gus Sholahuddin. (Note: Sholahuddin was Wiranto's Vice Presidential running mate in 2004.) Kalla campaign head Gatot Sudjito told reporters that Kalla also lost at polling stations in the neighborhoods of respected NU leaders Kiai Muchit Muzadi, brother of the NU chairman, and of Kiai Chatib Umar, a well-known NU cleric in Jember, East Java. Being Bugis -------------- ¶5. (SBU) According to people we have spoken with over the past year throughout Sulawesi and Maluku, Kalla's claim to represent both Islamic values and non-Javanese Indonesians misread the local dynamics of religion and party politics. As an ethnic Bugis (renowned seafarers and traders native to Sulawesi and Maluku in Eastern Indonesia),Kalla was hoping to garner support from fellow non-Javanese of all faiths. Golkar party cadres in ethnically and religiously diverse parts of Eastern Indonesia told us that Kalla ended up pushing away Golkar's Christian supporters instead. Off-Java Strategy was Just Off -------------- ¶6. (SBU) Golkar cadres and sitting officials in Kalla's home province of South Sulawesi and predominantly Christian East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) told us Kalla had become an increasing liability since the 2008 provincial elections. Rumors that Kalla planned to build more mosques in the predominantly Christian province of NTT helped to defeat the Golkar incumbent governor there last year. Golkar's share of the vote in both provinces during the 2009 Legislative elections dropped by nearly half. ¶7. (SBU) During the 2009 presidential election, Kalla appears to have lost in almost all provinces, except on his home island of Sulawesi where he carried three provinces. Christian Golkar SURABAYA 00000068 002.2 OF 002 officials in Kupang, NTT, told us that Kalla's effort to curry favor with Java's Muslim conservatives soured Christians on Golkar and cost him votes. In NTT and Maluku Provinces, home to large Christian populations and boasting traditionally strong Golkar party machinery, Kalla received only 7.4 percent and 18 percent of the vote respectively. MCCLELLAND