Best outcome

One of the most frequently asked questions now that the House of Representatives has called for a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly is what will happen to Indonesia between now and when that meeting actually takes place, assuming that it does take place at all.

All things being equal, the Assembly will hold its meeting within these next two months. The Assembly will ask for President Abdurrahman Wahid's accountability. Given the current enmity between the head of state and the majority in the legislature, the Assembly will likely reject his report and then remove him from office. Although it is not automatically the case, there seems to be a growing consensus that Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri will succeed Abdurrahman after his impeachment.

But two months is a long, and potentially a very disruptive time for Indonesia. The people, and the international community, will have to endure that long period of even greater uncertainty than today, until the national leadership crisis is resolved through this arduous and complex constitutional mechanism. All other national agenda, including the process of economic recovery, will have to wait until this issue is settled.

While this may be the constitutional path, it is not necessarily the best course for Indonesia, because it is potentially divisive, and will leave a bitter aftertaste, particularly among the supporters of the combative President.

This scenario, however, may not take place because anything can, and probably will, happen between now and the time the MPR holds its special session. Looking at developments over the last few days, unfortunately, both the best and the worst case scenarios have equal chances of materializing.

The worst scenario is for widespread violence to flare, plunging Indonesia, already on the brink of collapse, deeper into crisis. Violent protests by supporters of President Abdurrahman would spread beyond the existing few towns in his stronghold province of East Java to other provinces.

The President might then just get away with imposing a state of emergency giving himself virtually unlimited powers, including the right to dissolve the House and Assembly to stop the impeachment process against him.

It is now public knowledge that President Abdurrahman, in his desperation to cling to power, has tried to declare a state of emergency on two occasions in the past week. He backed off only after senior members of his Cabinet opposed the scheme. The fact that he was still planning to go ahead, even when the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police had openly advised against the plan, suggests that he was desperate, and that he might still try to do so again for a third time. What happens to this nation beyond the declaration of a state of emergency is anybody's guess. But the picture won't be pretty.

The best case scenario, of course, is for a political compromise acceptable to all, but this option has virtually been ruled out now that the move for impeachment through the MPR has begun, and that relations between the President and the legislature have soured. Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and the Golkar party, which together control over 50 percent of the seats in the House, have already stated that it is now almost too late to talk about a compromise.

That leaves Abdurrahman's voluntary resignation as probably the best of all existing possible outcomes. Wednesday's vote in the House of Representatives should have sent the clearest message so far of how low the popularity of the President has fallen that he should now seriously consider the resignation option and make a graceful if not respectable exit.

For all its shortcomings, the House is still the best reflection of the aspirations of the people in this country. The House and the Assembly are the outcomes of the 1999 general election, billed as the most democratic Indonesia held in over four decades. Consequently, President Abdurrahman too is one of the products of that democratic political process. For President Abdurrahman now to decry the House as an undemocratic institution is tantamount to denying his own position.

The President and his supporters could argue endlessly about the legality and constitutionality of the current impeachment process, but the bottom line is still that, after Wednesday's vote in the House, the President can now count on at best the support of no more than 11 percent of the House. That is as close an approximation of his popularity nationwide as we can get.

Even if he survives the attempt to oust him -- for one must never underestimate his resourcefulness -- it is mindboggling how President Abdurrahman hopes to govern effectively with such low support nationwide. It is high time for his closest aides, particularly those who have influence over him, to make him see the political reality and that in defending his presidency, he is essentially fighting for a lost cause. It is time that his aides, including his senior Cabinet ministers, advise him on the best course for him and his reputation, his supporters and his Nahdulatul Ulama, and most of all, for the entire nation.