VZCZCXRO6369
RR RUEHCHI RUEHCN RUEHDT RUEHHM
DE RUEHJS #0068/01 1900910
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 090910Z JUL 09
FM AMCONSUL SURABAYA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0435
INFO RUEHZS/ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 0200
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHHMUNA/HQ USPACOM HONOLULU HI
RUEHJA/AMEMBASSY JAKARTA 0424
RUEHJS/AMCONSUL SURABAYA 0446

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