Abdurrahman: To be, or not to be

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