Michael Shari, Kebumen – Abdurrahman Wahid starts the day with "good morning" instead of "salam alaikum." He wears street clothes and doesn't bother with an Islamic prayer cap unless he's actually praying. He has only one wife instead of the permitted four and asks that she cover her head with a scarf only on rare formal occasions.

Despite these moderate tendencies, Wahid is a magnet for Muslim supplicants, who press forward to kiss his hand everywhere he goes. Since 1984 he has headed the 34-million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, the largest Islamic organization in the world's most populous Muslim country. Now he seems likely to emerge as a political kingmaker after President Suharto leaves the scene, if he can keep the upper hand over activists who hope to meld politics and religion. Wahid, a half-blind cleric, is the driving force behind Muslim "traditionalists" who believe government should be secular. "The advantage of taking Islam out of politics is that it leaves the political institutions free to deal with the challenge of developing a more democratic structure, without the interference of Islam," he says through half-closed eyes and thick glasses.

As the May 29 election approaches, Wahid has already stepped into the kingmaker's role, actively nurturing potential successors to Suharto. In late April, in the remote town of Kebumen in Central Java, 10,000 people crowded around a stage as Wahid said a prayer on the first anniversary of the death of Suharto's wife, Siti Hartinah. At Wahid's side were two ambitious pretenders to the throne: the President's daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (known as Tutut) and army chief Gen. Hartono. A week later, Wahid joined a midnight vigil at the Jakarta home of opposition leader Megawati Sukar-noputri.

Wahid also has his own political supporters. They tend to be fiercely loyal to this 57-year-old, 130-kg grandson of the NU's founder, who called him a "wild child." The group is backed by a network of elderly kyais (Indonesia's Muslim nobility) and their mosques and schools across this 85% Muslim nation. Says Franz Magnis-Suseno, professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta: "The NU is real people power."

Wahid's independent tactics are a major stumbling block for "modernists," who want the government to harness Islamic power. Wahid has alienated the faction's de facto leader, Minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie, a Suharto protege known to have designs on the presidency. Wahid has also shunned Habibie's seven-year-old Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association, a springboard for aspiring cabinet members and military top brass.

Wahid is a great survivor. He narrowly won reelection as NU chairman in 1995. A year later, witnesses say, military agents incited a riot in Situbondo, an NU stronghold in East Java, burning down churches and killing a Pentecostal priest and her family. The purpose was to make it look as if Wahid was a militant fundamentalist who had organized the attacks. Wahid responded with a public apology since thousands of NU members were involved, a humble gesture that drew praise from kyais nationwide. Suharto then had little choice but to shake Wahid's hand for the TV cameras. "Now every instrument that was used to replace Wahid is being used to support him," says Cornelis Lay, professor of political science at Gadjah Madah University in Yogyakarta. "Wahid is not just a political figure. He's a political institution."