In Indonesia, a Scandal Over Soccer

I have "translated" an article taken from New York Times into simpler English. Please tell me if my interpretation of the text is not accurate and show me how to make it more accurate. Thanks.

The original article can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/world/asia/04iht-indonesia04.html

Below is my modified version:


JAKARTA – Chaotic street protests, quarrelling high-ranked people and repeated accusations of corruption – it all looks like another typically unpleasant situation of politics in Indonesia.

But the latest never-ending fight to absorb the attention of Indonesia is not about politics as usual. It is about soccer. And it is more serious than politics.

In recent weeks, hundreds of Indonesians have gone to the streets across the country to demand the removal of Nurdin Halid, from his position as chairman of the troublesome Football Association of Indonesia, a position he has held since 2003 – part of it from behind prison bars for two separate corruption convictions.

In that time, opponents argue, Mr.Halid has abandoned his responsibilities to make better Indonesian soccer, while building political power with his allies and make himself rich.

Mr. Halid asked for protection from the Indonesian House of Representative Tuesday, because 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 caused intense anger of Indonesians by announcing that he was running as a candidate for the head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Football Federation (ASEAN Football Federation), as well as for the third term of the chairman of the Indonesian Football association.

According to Tondo Widodo, a former association committee member, the cause of this lates 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 have reigned over P.S.S.I (Indonesian Football Association),” he said.

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 bad condition, and local clubs prefer importing foreign players to developing local talent, Mr. Widodo said.

Indonesia is ranked 129th in the world by 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 irritates.

While the sport has been struggling, Mr. Halid is accused of illegally accumulating wealth for himself and his close associates. Most recently, he has faced accusations that he took 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 a tool for spreading the influence of politicians from his party, Golkar, which is in an unfriendly and uncertain coalition with the party of current 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 annoying 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 (Indonesian Football Association) was an organization and 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 Indonesia, the public grew an ever increasing disbelief toward the broken system, which is marked by corruption, vote buying, illegally-funded-dominated-politics, and a bureaucracy that is far beyond what can be measured by statistics, said Dodi Ambardi, the director of the Indonesian Survey Institue, a research organization. The threatening state of the nation’s most popular sport is just another part of that broken system, he said.