Best outcome

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.