Aubrey Belford – Chaotic street protests, bickering elite and swirling allegations of corruption – it all looks like another typically unsavoury 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 Nurdin. 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 (PSSI), a position he has held since 2003 – part of it from behind bars for two separate corruption convictions.
In that time, opponents contend, Nurdin has run Indonesian football 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. Nurdin asked a committee of the Indonesian House of Representatives for protection on 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. Nurdin also drew the ire of Indonesians by announcing during the same hearing that he was running as a candidate to head the Asean 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," Tondo said. "They're all ashamed. They all dislike what Nurdin Halid and his group have done as they've reigned over the PSSI," he said.
Despite Indonesia's population of about 238 million and its obsessive love of football, 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, Tondo said.
Indonesia is ranked 129th in the world by the world football 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, Nurdin 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 US$11,000 (RM33,000) 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. Nurdin is seen as being particularly close to the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the billionaire chairman of Golkar.
All this is particularly galling because football 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.
"The PSSI was an organisation, a tool of national struggle," Tondo said. "But now it has become a tool for Nurdin'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 organisation. The dire state of the nation's most popular sport is just another part of that malaise.
Nurdin is not alone in being accused of bringing politics into football. Allies of the president and his party, the Democrats, harbour hopes that ousting Nurdin would weaken the Golkar Party, Dodi said.
Susilo's sports minister, Andi Mallarangeng, had denied that he was playing politics with the sport and said that Nurdin, as a convicted criminal, was unfit to lead the association. He had threatened to intervene in the association despite the risk that this could provoke sanctions from Fifa against Indonesian football.
"Football should not be politicised because football is public good," Andi said. "It belongs to everybody, just like the air."
Fifa is widely seen by Indonesians as unreceptive to criticism of Nurdin 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 next month.
Indonesia's member of Fifa's ethics committee, Suryadharma Tahir, said 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 football 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-Nurdin protesters wearing headbands proclaiming a "PSSI revolution" clashed with pro-Nurdin 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 football.
"Everyone, be it Andi or Nurdin, they're putting the interests of their factions ahead of football," he said. "If we want to develop football, we have to stand shoulder to shoulder, not be split apart."