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View all search resultsNU in deadlock over Yahya chairmanship
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) remains divided over the chairmanship of Yahya Cholil Staquf, whose position is still in limbo following the latest meeting between its supreme council and senior clerics.
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Yahya Cholil Staquf, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama's (NU) central board, delivers a speech on Sept. 4, 2023, during the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Jakarta. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
N
ahdlatul Ulama (NU) remains divided over the chairmanship of Yahya Cholil Staquf, with supreme council members reaffirming his dismissal while senior clerics rejected it in the latest internal meeting.
NU executives, advisory board members and senior clerics gathered on Saturday at the group’s Tebuireng Islamic boarding school in Jombang, East Java, to discuss the power struggle in the country’s largest Muslim organization.
Saturday’s forum also invited and was attended by members of NU supreme council Syuriah, who on Nov. 20 gave Yahya an ultimatum to resign or be dismissed for his invitation to a pro-Israel speaker for an internal event in August and alleged financial mismanagement of the NU executive board.
Yahya refused to stand down, prompting the council to dismiss Yahya from his chairmanship through a circular on Nov. 26 though most NU executives rejected the ouster on the grounds that it was “not in accordance with the organization's bylaws”.
One of Syuriah representatives attending the forum in Jombang, Mohammad Nuh, a former education minister, said on Saturday that the meeting served as a good medium for reconciliation but insisted that the supreme council remained NU’s highest leadership and that its decision to oust Yahya remained sound.
“Any ideas for [reconciliation] is welcome, but there’s an institution that makes those decisions in the organization,” Nuh said, as quoted from NU’s webpage. “The final decision must go through the mechanism [in the council] because this is an organizational issue.”
Nuh said that Yahya’s dismissal did “not stem from personal disputes”, in an apparent response to widespread rumors on social media that Yahya’s ouster also concerned NU’s handling of state-owned mining concessions.
