EASTERN INDONESIA: ISLAMIC VOTERS NOT SWAYED BY RELIGIOUS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 SURABAYA 000068

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SUBJECT: EASTERN INDONESIA: ISLAMIC VOTERS NOT SWAYED BY RELIGIOUS
LEADERSHIP; NON-JAVANESE UNMOVED BY KALLA'S MESSAGE

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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
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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
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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

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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