Sidoarjo in East Java is the base for the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). It is therefore not surprising that the organization spearheaded a move to help people displaced by the mudflow launch a class action suit against Lapindo, the company whose mining activities triggered the mudflow.
However, there are indications that NU now wishes to bury the issue of the class action suit. This has angered NU youth activists who suspect that NU leaders dropped the plan after they received funding from the Bakrie family, the owners of Lapindo.
According to the chairman of the NU Human Resource Development and Study Institute in Sidoarjo, Ahmad Firdausi Ali, the Bakrie family extended Rp 1 billion to NU leaders during the NU national conference in Surabaya in June. The mudflow disaster began on May 29.
On top of that, he said, NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi also received money from Aburizal Bakrie, to help Lapindo victims, the amount of which was never disclosed.
But this claim was rejected by a spokesman for Aburizal Bakrie, who said that Aburizal might have extended financial help to NU for the conference in Surabaya, but that he never gave assistance to NU or NU leaders to help people affected by the mudflow in Sidoarjo.
However, indications that NU leaders were using Lapindo money to assist the mudflow victims were strong, according to Fatihul Faizun from the Nahdliyin Working Group in Sidoarjo.
Faizun suspected that as NU Sidoarjo refused to take any money from Lapindo, Hasyim channeled the money through former executives of NU Sidoarjo branch office, who then established an independent command post to help the victims.
This command post conducted various humanitarian activities, ranging from the distribution of food to the establishment of monitoring posts around the mud ponds, manned 24 hours a day.
NU Sidoarjo office itself established its own command post for the victims, with fewer activities, because of a lack of funding. "We have our own command post, and we are not connected with this independent command post," Gus Abdi Manaf, executive chairman of NU Sidoarjo, told The Jakarta Post.
Interestingly, when Hasyim first visited the mudflow victims, he stopped by the independent command post, and not the official NU command post. As a result, NU youth activists demonstrated against Hasyim's visit to the independent command post.
The people displaced by the mudflow, who were already mad at Lapindo, were angered by news that NU took money from Lapindo, and some of them went to the independent command post and tore down a tent there.
Earlier this week, when the division within NU Sidoarjo was widening, Hasyim visited the NU command post. It is unclear where NU will stand in the future with regards to Lapindo.