Abdurrahman: To be, or not to be

SINGAPORE: The cliff-hanger in Jakarta that had a nail-biting Indonesia on the precipice on Monday ended in an anti-climax, and what a good anti-climax it was!

Mercifully, mayhem from President Abdurrahman Wahid's suicide squads was averted, thanks in part to good sense, heavy rain, troop reinforcements and the barbed-wires that ringed Parliament and Merdeka Palace. The market was relieved and the battered rupiah rallied at 10,975 to the greenback. That is still bad, but it could have been a lot worse.

But the show is far from finished. The country's lawmakers are restless and angry with the President. Of the 500 legislators in the House of Representatives, 363 voted to censure him for the second time, bringing the constitutional process a step closer to his impeachment within the next few months.

What now for the embattled Indonesian leader, who has seen his rickety parliamentary support whittled to nothing more than his puny party's? That the military abstained in Monday's vote is of little solace for him. Shorn of parliamentary support, his is a diminished presidency with little clout, and further politicking can only spell more uncertainty for Indonesia. There will be no stability unless there is a new consensus among the political elite.

The lawmakers are demanding Abdurrahman's resignation, but he remains defiant. Vowing that he would never resign, he has condemned the move to censure him as unconstitutional. How to break the deadlock? One possible way is for him to become a constitutional figurehead and cede executive powers to his deputy Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose party has the biggest number of votes in Parliament.

But he has never been in favor of this idea. Clearly, Abdurrahman had overplayed his hand with his dismissive attitude towards the legislators. Like it or not, he will have to swallow his pride and make peace with his detractors. He grossly underestimates the Indonesian legislature, a newly empowered institution that is determined not to be treated scornfully. Above all, he has to regain Megawati's support, and this only by ceding real authority to her.

Abdurrahman is an experienced and wily politician. He had tried, vainly, to stop the censure proceedings. He bullied, he threatened, he cajoled, he apologized, and he asked for forgiveness. He did everything he could, and conjured up the specter of thousands of fanatical supporters who are willing to die on his behalf to protect his presidency.

All this to no avail. The legislature remains unmoved. The legislators are zeroing in not just on his involvement in two financial scandals but also his incompetence, his failure to carry out reforms in his 18 months in office, and his inability to lift the economy from its morass.

They also blame him for stoking up the fires of separatism and his inattention to the ethnic unrest in the Malukus and Kalimantan. They are, in short, blaming the President for everything that is wrong with Indonesia.

The message from the legislature is clear and unequivocal.

An overwhelming majority of the lawmakers have had enough of him and they want him out now, period. They have shifted their support to Vice President Megawati and Abdurrahman has to grapple with this fact.

His authority questioned and his legitimacy gravely undermined, he now has one month to give a satisfactory response to the second censure. It is doubtful he can do this.

Which means he is headed for yet another confrontation with the legislature. Unless there is a new compromise, Indonesia's future is awfully bleak.

-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network