In Indonesia, a Scandal Over Soccern (NYT)

By AUBREY BELFORD

Published: March 3, 2011

JAKARTA — Chaotic street protests, bickering elites and swirling allegations of corruption — it all looks like another typically unsavory episode of politics in Indonesia. But the latest protracted fight to absorb the attention of one of the world’s largest democracies is not about politics as usual. It is about soccer. And it is all the more serious for it.

Hundreds of Indonesians have taken to the streets across the country in recent weeks to demand the ouster of a prominent politician, Nurdin Halid, as chairman of the beleaguered Football Association of Indonesia, a position he has held since 2003 — part of it from behind bars for two separate corruption convictions.
In that time, opponents contend, Mr. Halid has run Indonesian soccer into the ground while consolidating power for political allies and enriching himself.

He is now engaged in a bitter struggle with members of the government who want him out. The challengers for his job include the Indonesian Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George Toisutta, and an energy tycoon, Arifin Panigoro, who has already created a breakaway league not affiliated with the association. Both men had their candidacies rejected by the association in February, but that decision was overturned on appeal. A meeting that would elect a chairman, originally scheduled for this month, has been delayed amid the infighting.

Mr. Halid, for his part, asked a committee of the Indonesian House of Representatives for protection Tuesday, claiming his family had received death threats from senior government officials. “I leave my life in the hands of God, may he be glorified and exalted,” he said. Mr. Halid also drew the ire of Indonesians by announcing during the same hearing that he was running as a candidate to head the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Football Federation, as well as for a third term at the helm of the Indonesian association.
According to Tondo Widodo, a former association committee member, the root of this latest crisis is simple: Indonesians are sick of losing.

“You ask anyone on the street, they don’t have to be an intellectual, they can be a taxi driver,” Mr. Widodo said. “They’re all ashamed. They all dislike what Nurdin Halid and his group have done as they’ve reigned over the P.S.S.I.,” he said referring to the initials of the Indonesian name of the association.

Despite Indonesia’s population of about 238 million and its obsessive love of soccer, particularly European league matches, the national team has not won an international tournament since the 1991 Southeast Asian Games. Stadiums and training facilities are in disrepair, and local clubs prefer importing foreign players to fostering local talent, Mr. Widodo said.

Indonesia is ranked 129th in the world by the world soccer governing body, FIFA, having sunk as low as 153rd and reached as high as 76th. It currently stands between Puerto Rico and Dominica in the world rankings. The national team has not been in the FIFA World Cup since 1938, when the country was still a colony of the Netherlands. Although Indonesia is not the only Asian nation with a disappointing national team, the lack of international victories still rankles.

While the sport has floundered, Mr. Halid is accused of illegally amassing wealth for himself and close associates. Most recently, he has faced allegations that he pocketed 100 million rupiah, or about $11,000, in government funding for a team in East Kalimantan Province.

At the same time, he is accused of turning the association into an organ for spreading the influence of politicians from his party, Golkar, which is in a frosty and tenuous coalition with the party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Mr. Halid is seen as being particularly close to the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the billionaire chairman of Golkar.

All this is particularly galling for Indonesians because soccer is one of the few truly uniting forces for Indonesians, who speak hundreds of languages, follow multiple religions and live spread across thousands of islands, Mr. Widodo noted.

“The P.S.S.I. was an organization, a tool of national struggle,” he said. “But now it has become a tool for Nurdin Halid’s political struggle for Golkar.”

More than a decade after the 1998 overthrow of the dictator Suharto brought democracy to their country, Indonesians are also increasingly disillusioned with a system marked by corruption, vote buying, patronage politics and a bureaucracy that is not accountable, said Dodi Ambardi, the director of the Indonesian Survey Institute, a research organization. The dire state of the nation’s most popular sport is just another part of that malaise, he said.

Mr. Halid is not alone in being accused of bringing politics into soccer. Allies of the president and his party, the Democrats, harbor hopes that ousting Mr. Halid would weaken the Golkar Party, Mr. Ambardi said.
Mr. Yudhoyono’s sports minister, Andi Mallarangeng, has denied that he is playing politics with the sport and said that Mr. Halid, as a convicted criminal, was unfit to lead the association. He has threatened to intervene in the association despite the risk that this could provoke sanctions from FIFA against Indonesian soccer.
“Football should not be politicized because football is public good,” Mr. Mallarangeng said. “It belongs to everybody, just like the air.”

FIFA is widely seen by Indonesians as unreceptive to criticism of Mr. Halid and has largely stayed aloof from the crisis. However, the body's executive committee on Thursday ordered Indonesia to reform its electoral rules and hold fresh elections by the end of April. It also threatened the association with possible suspension if it is unable to gain control of the breakaway Indonesian Premier League of Mr. Panigoro, one of Mr. Halid's challengers.

Indonesia’s member of FIFA’s ethics committee, Suryadharma Tahir, said in an interview that his main concern was the possibility of government interference in the internal business of the independent national association. FIFA consistently rejects government interference in national soccer associations, threatening sanctions against countries that engage in it.

As the controversy continues, the anger on the street is palpable, with rallies popping up in cities across Indonesia. At one recent protest outside the association’s headquarters at Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta, anti-Halid protesters wearing headbands proclaiming a “P.S.S.I. Revolution” clashed with pro-Halid supporters of the Jakarta team Persija.

As the two sides hurled rocks and swung bamboo staves on one street, the police on dirt bikes hurtled between them, scattering the protesters with cavalry-style charges.
After riot police officers formed a barrier between the antagonists, one protester, Fajar Dikra Pratama, said he was with neither side. He was simply embarrassed and frustrated with the state of Indonesian soccer.

“Everyone, be it Andi Mallarangeng, Arifin, Nurdin Halid, they’re putting the interests of their factions ahead of soccer,” he said. “If we want to develop soccer, we have to stand shoulder to shoulder, not be split apart.”