The daughter of late president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, Yenny Wahid said she wanted to return the PKB to the right path.

“The clerics want PKB to return to Gus Dur’s visions for the party and this congress is aimed at doing that,” Yenny said at the congress.

The party claimed 1,000 supporters volunteered to provide security at the congress, with 500 of them seen wearing dressed in traditional Madurese attire with masks and wielding rattan sticks.

The other splinter group of PKB, known as PKB Muhaimin Iskandar, named after the manpower and transmigration minister, called for police to break up the congress, saying Yenny’s PKB was an illegal organization.

Muhaimin’s PKB won a legal dispute recognizing it as the official PKB in June 2008.

A day before the congress took place, the East Java branch of the PKB youth organization Garda Bangsa reported the congress to police.

Yenny said she was fully aware that her group was not recognized by the country’s legal system but claimed her party was the real one because it defended the public interest.

“The PKB under Muhaimin [who is Gus Dur’s nephew] is too busy pandering to the government
and isn’t listening to the people,” she said.

However, Yenny said that despite the ongoing conflict, both groups, which mainly comprised Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) followers, had to reconciliate if the party wished to continue to thrive and contend elections in 2014.

Large parties such as the Golkar Party are calling for the parliamentary threshold to be increased from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent or 5 percent, meaning parties that failed to received this minimum percentage of votes in elections would not be represented in the legislature. The threshold is being discussed in the election bill.

An Indonesian Survey Circle study in October showed that support for the PKB dropped to 3.4 percent from 4.9 percent in the 2009 elections.

Politician Marwan Ja’far from Muhaimin’s PKB said his party would accept the offer of reconciliation from Yenny if she came to him and not the other way around.

“There is only one PKB — us. If [Yenny] is willing to atone for her sins, we will certainly accept her,” Marwan told The Jakarta Post.

Another politician from Muhaimin’s PKB, Imam Nahrawi, said he suspected ulterior motives behind Yenny’s invitation, saying Yenny was campaigning for the Great Indonesian Movement (Gerindra).

Yenny’s husband, Dhohir Farisi, is a Gerindra politician.

Meanwhile, another PKB splinter group led by a member of the influential advisory council of the party, Lily Wahid, and the party’s former secretary-general, Lukman Edi, plans to conduct a reconciliation forum from Dec. 27-29 in Jakarta.

Adding to the confusion, 30 prominent NU elders and clerics, who had previously joined the Nahdlatul Ulama Awakening Party (PKNU) and wished to unite with the PKB, decided to join the United Development Party (PPP).

“We tried our best to reconcile both groups but we think that both politicians harbor ill intentions against each other,” PKNU leader Anwar Iskandar was quoted as saying by news portal tempointeraktif.com
Anwar said Muslim leaders needed a political vehicle to influence the national policies. “We need a strong party to do so,” he said.

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