Photo from muktamar.nu.id
For five days in late August, Jombang became a crowded arena of clerical authority, organisational politics and quiet negotiation.
Delegates to Nahdlatul Ulama’s 35th congress argued over procedure, counted support for rival candidates and exchanged stories about alliances, government connections and campaign resources. Some conversations took place in formal sessions. Many others unfolded in pesantren (Islamic boarding school) courtyards, hotel rooms and over cups of coffee.
The contests were fierce, but NU did not split. That combination of rivalry and continuity tells us something important about how power works inside Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation.
The congress followed months of tension within NU’s central board, particularly between its supreme leader (rais aam), KH Miftachul Akhyar, and chairman (ketua umum), KH Yahya Cholil Staquf, widely known as Gus Yahya. Several figures had begun positioning themselves for the succession well before delegates arrived in Jombang.
Yet the final outcome was more complicated than a simple victory for one faction over another. Gus Yahya’s accountability report for 2021–2026 was accepted by acclamation, even though he did not remain chairman. Delegates then voted 401 to 150 to have a council of nine senior ulama, the ahlul halli wal aqdi (AHWA), choose the next chairman. AHWA retained Miftachul Akhyar as rais aam but selected KH Abdul Hakim Mahfudz, or Gus Kikin, as chairman for 2026–2031.
NU and the state
NU is often discussed through the language of moderation, pluralism and democratic accommodation. But those ideas tell only part of the Jombang story. The congress was also about bargaining among families, senior ulama, regional branches, administrators, activists and politically connected figures. Each possessed a different source of influence.
This bargaining can look untidy from the outside. Inside NU, however, it is also one of the ways disagreement is contained without becoming a struggle over the survival of the organisation itself. Saifullah Yusuf, Gus Ipul, captured the instinct in a phrase heard around the congress: pengurus secukupe, NU selawase — officeholders come and go, NU remains.
Gus Ipul chaired the organising committee while serving as Minister of Social Affairs in President Prabowo Subianto’s cabinet. But the overlap between NU and the state was hardly confined to him. Other NU figures also occupied senior government positions, while Muhaimin Iskandar of the National Awakening Party (PKB) served in the cabinet.
There was no solid evidence that the government directly intervened in the congress, though the question of indirect influence remains open. What was unmistakable was the value attached to access to the state. Candidates were discussed not only in terms of religious scholarship, pesantren standing or organisational experience, but also their ability to maintain useful relationships with government.
Such access can have institutional as well as political value. Government Regulation No 25 of 2024, for example, created a pathway for businesses owned by religious organisations to receive priority offers over certain mining areas. NU’s central board publicly welcomed the opportunity. Rival networks at Jombang competed over leadership, but political distance from government was not a serious program offered by any major camp.
Negotiated clerical legitimacy
The method for choosing the leadership therefore mattered.
At the previous congress in Lampung in 2021, AHWA selected the rais aam, while delegates directly elected the chairman. Gus Yahya defeated Said Aqil Siroj by 337 votes to 210. In Jombang, delegates first decided whether to extend AHWA to the executive leadership. By a vote of 401 to 150, they did.
What followed illustrates the layered character of authority inside NU.
Delegates elected the nine AHWA members in an open session. KH Nurul Huda Djazuli received 485 votes, Tgk Nuruzzahri Yahya 477, KH Baharuddin HS 392 and Miftachul Akhyar 350. Those numbers constituted the council; they did not determine the rais aam. AHWA later chose Miftachul Akhyar by consensus (mufakat), although he had ranked fourth in the delegate vote.
The nominations for chairman produced another ranking. Gus Kikin led with 472, followed by Zulfa Mustofa with 262, Abdussalam Shohib with 261, Gus Yahya with 258 and Nusron Wahid with 207. Eligibility requirements subsequently altered the list put before AHWA, with Abdul Ghaffar Rozin entering the final five after Nusron was excluded under rules concerning political or government office.
AHWA then chose Gus Kikin through deliberation (musyawarah).
Votes structured who entered the room; they did not dictate the outcome.
We describe this arrangement as negotiated clerical legitimacy. Delegates authorised the procedure, while senior ulama exercised judgement within it. This arrangement allowed NU to replace its executive leadership without overturning every centre of authority at once.
But it carries risks. Closed deliberation leaves ordinary members with limited knowledge of why a particular candidate was finally preferred. Seniority can reproduce established networks. Religious authority, like other forms of authority, can also become part of political strategy.
These questions will become more important if proposals to extend the AHWA model to lower levels of NU are pursued.
The blurry lines of money politics
Money was the most sensitive subject in the corridors.
Stories about payments circulated through personal networks, social media and podcasts. The language varied. Similar expenditures might be described as hospitality, travel assistance, support for a branch, allowances (uang saku), or inducements. Most of these claims cannot be independently verified, and we do not present them as established facts.
Several people we interviewed nevertheless found Jombang more troubling than the 2021 Lampung congress. Their accounts differed widely, but a common distinction emerged.
In Lampung, they recalled payments mostly as something that appeared after the congress, often described as uang saku. In Jombang, by contrast, the talk was of resources circulating much earlier, through repeated meetings and in different forms. We cannot establish how accurate that comparison is. But the perception itself matters, because once participants believe money is circulating, it can shape the behaviour of every camp.
If one group believes its competitors are distributing resources, it may feel compelled to mobilise its own resources. Delegates, too, may begin to expect material support as part of participation in congress politics. In that environment, the boundary between hospitality, organisational assistance and inducement becomes increasingly difficult to draw.
After the opening ceremony, a participant linked to one campaign asked us to guess how much might be spent on a district board and its leaders, before suggesting a figure of around Rp50 million (US$2,795). Others spoke of larger sums allegedly offered to overseas branches. We were also shown a document recording organisational assistance, although it did not establish a link to any particular payment.
Even without proving a particular allegation, the controversy exposes a governance problem. Clear rules on campaign expenditure, gifts, hospitality and donations to branches would make inducements harder to disguise. They would also protect legitimate organisational assistance from being casually labelled ‘vote buying’.
Islah, organisational cohesion, and transparency
The acceptance of Gus Yahya’s accountability report served another purpose. Rejecting it would have turned the succession into a formal repudiation of the outgoing leadership. Accepting it allowed the congress to close one period without committing itself to another.
This matters in NU, where today’s defeated candidate may remain a respected kiai (senior cleric) whose cooperation is needed tomorrow. Reconciliation, or islah, offers a way to end competition without humiliating those who lose. Yet reconciliation becomes problematic when the desire for harmony arrives before questions of responsibility have been answered.
The Jombang congress was fiercely competitive and still ended without an organisational rupture. That is no small achievement for an organisation of NU’s size and political importance.
But the habits that make compromise possible also create their own risks. In entering its second century, NU must reckon with an uncomfortable reality: an organisation that cannot audit its campaigns or clarify its backroom compromises cannot credibly anchor democratic and moral authority for the nation.
This article draws on participant observation and public records. A longer article is in preparation.
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