Rival events show two faces of divided PKB

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 05/05/2008 11:24 AM | Headlines

The two rival extraordinary meetings of the National Awakening Party (PKB) might have used the same party symbols, but otherwise they could not have been more different.

The PKB meeting led by Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid was held at the Al-Ashriyyah Nurul Iman, a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in Parung, Bogor regency, and took on the modest, traditional and conservative flavor of its setting.

The muddy road in front of the compound was too narrow for the thousands of arriving participants, resulting in a prolonged traffic jam. The congestion was made worse by the appearance of dozens of street vendors trying to profit from the rare event by offering products and services ranging from PKB souvenirs to massages.

School leader Habib Saggaf had to deploy thousands of his students to help prepare for the meeting. The boys, dressed in sarongs and skullcaps and looking tired, moved through the crowd offering guests coffee and snacks.

They were seen working hard the night before the opening ceremony laying ceramic tiles in the meeting hall, and dropped to the floor of the pesantren's mosque as soon as the closing ceremony for the two-day meeting was over.

In a complete change of pace, dismissed PKB chairman Muhaimin Iskandar held his camp's extraordinary meeting at the Mercure Hotel in the Ancol amusement park, North Jakarta. Apart from the fact some of the kyai (clerics) wore sarongs, the meeting resembled any other modern conference found in big cities everyday.

From the meeting's opening on Friday, the hotel's parking area was filled with congratulatory floral plaques, including some from members of other factions at the House of Representatives.

The facilities included a press room with 25 computers, all with Internet connections.

Most of the participants stayed at the Mercure Hotel although some had to stay in nearby hotels -- including the Sheraton, Novotel and Ibis hotels -- because there were not enough rooms for all participants.

"The rooms and food are incredible here, I have nothing to complain about," a participant from Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam said.

He asked not to be named because he also attended the Parung meeting, which he described as awful in terms of facilities.

"I didn't take a shower for the two days I stayed there," he said, adding he and other participants had to sleep on the floor of the mosque or in local residents' houses.

Ikhsan Abdullah from the Gus Dur camp acknowledged the facility was ill-equipped to deal with such a big meeting, but said they had had only five days to prepare for the event.

"Despite these shortcomings, party executives from all over Indonesia attended the meeting," he said.

Ikhsan pointed out the PKB had its roots in pesantren.

"We held the meeting at a pesantren because we want to get back to party basics," he said.

He said the Gus Dur camp spent less than Rp 1 billion (US$109,000) on the meeting.

The Muhaimin camp's three-day meeting in the four-star hotel cost only about Rp 1.5 billion, according to former PKB secretary-general Muhammad Lukman Edy, who is the state minister for development of disadvantaged regions and head of the camp's conference organizing committee.

The PKB, the fifth-largest faction at the House, has been split into two rival camps since Muhaimin was ousted as party chairman earlier this month at the behest of Gus Dur.

Both camps are seeking to register with the General Elections Commission and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry before May 12 to contest the 2009 general elections. (alf)

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