Amien Rais' political acrobatics

Amien Rais' political acrobatics

For all practical purposes, President Habibie delivered his
accountability speech twice to the People's Consultative Assembly
(MPR). It was only the President who spoke on Sunday. The
people's representatives were not allowed to interrupt the
President's speech and were not given the opportunity to question
him afterwards because the entire allotted time was used by the
President. This happened at the MPR under the leadership of the
reformist Amien Rais.

The MPR being a people's forum to question their president,
the people's representatives should have been given the larger
part of the time apportioned. Instead it became Habibie's forum
-- a forum for the President to hold his monologue while the
representatives of 210 million Indonesians could only silently
listen, like mutes bereft of speech by their MPR chairman, who is
known as a reformist. This is a bad precedent because it
disregards the principle of fairness. It is also bad because it
raises the suspicion that Amien Rais is tacitly colluding with
Habibie.

All this induces us to reexamine Amien Rais' past
maneuverings. Before the (June) general election he declared that
he was only willing to be president. After his party gained only
a small number of seats in the legislature, he said he wanted to
become the opposition. Now he is chairman of the MPR and has even
turned into a king-maker by nominating Gus Dur as a presidential
candidate. In the meantime certain factions in the "axis force",
which Amien leads, are moving to nominate Nurcholish Madjid as an
alternative candidate -- this while Amien Rais has never
withdrawn his support for Gus Dur.

In his capacity as chairman of the MPR, Amien Rais approached
student demonstrators, inviting a hundred of them to come into
the building and listen to Habibie's speech, speaking to them
from atop a car. Amien Rais skillfully spoke to the protesters,
giving the impression that he was looking for popularity, but
proved less skillful in putting a time limit on Habibie's speech,
leaving no time for the people's representatives to let
themselves be heard. Amien Rais was quite deft in shielding
Habibie.

Amien Rais is currently engaging in political acrobatics.
This, however, is no ordinary acrobatics since it is being staged
at the MPR, which is about to elect our next president. We must
therefore be watchful. What this newspaper aims to achieve is to
remind Indonesians that they are free to bellow and harbor hopes.
But they must be ready to see their hopes vanish, given the MPR
and MPR leadership they have at the present.

-- Media Indonesia, Jakarta