Cleric Bashir’s endorsement a poison chalice for candidate

Muslim group urges members not to vote for presidential hopeful Anies Baswedan after Abu Bakar Bashir endorses campaign

Abu Bakar Bashir in Cilacap District Court in 2016. Picture: Getty Images

Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation has entered the election race with a thinly veiled attack on presidential candidate Anies Baswedan after notorious hardline cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appeared to endorse his campaign.

Nahdlatul Ulama secretary-general Saifullah Yusuf warned the organisation’s 150 million members this week against supporting Mr Baswedan, the former Jakarta governor whose campaign has been gaining momentum on the strength of a policy platform emphasising accountability and change.

“Let’s not support a pair that is supported by people who oppose the way NU people think, like the candidate supported by Abu Bakar Bashir,” Mr Saifullah said in a statement that earned a swift backlash from the Anies camp.

Anies Baswedan poses for pictures with students last month. Picture: AFP

Bashir, the former spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah – the Indonesian terror group behind the 2002 Bali bombings – said this month he believed Mr Anies was the candidate who would “try to govern this country with Islamic laws as much as possible”.

Bashir, 85, has denied any involvement in the twin blasts which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, but served more than a decade in jail for his links to a militant training camp in Aceh.

This week, two Malaysian militants held in Guantanamo Bay for almost two decades pleaded guilty to their role in Indonesia’s worst terror attack in exchange for giving evidence against alleged Bali bombing mastermind Hambali.

Mr Anies is polling well with conservative Islamic groups after controversially riding a wave of Islamic zealotry in 2017 to defeat incumbent Jakarta governor Ahok, a minority Chinese Christian.

But he is also capturing support among educated, urban Indonesians who acknowledge his ­stewardship of Jakarta during the Covid-19 pandemic, and are dissatisfied with President Joko Widodo’s administration.

The outgoing President is seen to have thrown his weight behind the campaign of Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming, who is Jokowi’s eldest son.

Mr Anies’ team insisted this week it had no control over who endorsed his campaign and that he would govern for all Indonesians if elected on February 14.

Still, the 2017 election remains his Achilles heel, despite Mr Prabowo’s Gerindra party having been a major backer of that campaign.

Mr Prabowo – the frontrunner candidate whose lead has slipped just below 20 percentage points in the latest Indikator poll released on Thursday – seized on the issue this week. A campaign spokesman warned a vote for the Anies camp could not only jeopardise Indonesia’s national credo of “unity in ­diversity” but also relations with its regional neighbours.

“No country would be comfortable if the president is supported by those with a terrorist background,” campaign deputy Ali Maskyar Musa said.

“We can imagine if the presidential and vice-presidential candidates have elements and backgrounds of terrorism and have a track record that is not in line with Pancasila (Indonesia’s five guiding principles), this will create new tensions in the region, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, especially with neighbouring countries.”

Mr Anies’ vice-presidential running mate, Muhaimin Iskandar, a prominent figure within the moderate, highly factionalised NU, has hit back at the NU comments which he described as an embarrassment for an organisation that is supposed to be ­neutral. “The bias is shameful. (NU leaders) should not take sides,” he said.

In fact, NU played an oversized role in the 2019 re-election of ­Jokowi after he selected prominent cleric Ma’ruf Amin as his ­running mate, despite its 1926 ­constitution committing to political neutrality.

All three presidential candidates – Mr Anies, Mr Prabowo and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo – have worked to secure the support of various NU factions in the hope of locking in millions of votes in the Muslim-majority nation. But it was Mr Prabowo, a former special forces commander accused of gross human rights violations, who this week secured the hotly contested endorsement of east Java governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa who is said to control millions of female votes through her role as head of the NU women’s chapter.