Erratic leadership

President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid issued a presidential decree on Thursday appointing Marzuki Darusman the new Cabinet secretary. Marzuki is a prominent Golkar Party politician who was attorney general until President Abdurrahman Wahid ordered him replaced by Baharuddin Lopa, who died of heart failure in Saudi Arabia this week.

Marzuki is filling the position vacated by Marsilam Simanjuntak, who was made the justice minister on June 1.

That, by the way, was the date when Marzuki saw himself dismissed as attorney general to make way for Baharuddin Lopa, who, as might be recalled, was until then minister of justice. The justice ministry portfolio which Lopa vacated was filled by Marsilam Simanjuntak, who was then Cabinet secretary.

A bit confusing? Musical chairs -- the game in which children run around two rows of chairs while music is played and each child tries to sit on one as soon as the music stops -- usually is. At least the game keeps players and onlookers in a mild state of suspense since there is always one chair less than the number of players, so one child has to drop out of the game every time. The one who remains at the end is the winner.

Politics, of course, is not child's play. But the principle of keeping people in a state of uncertainty so that one's next step will come as a surprise to the other party is often employed by politicians as a means to attain certain ends. Could it be that Gus Dur is playing musical chairs of sorts for a purpose?

These days it appears that the President enjoys confounding people with moves that to the general public may seem to make little sense. Inconsistent and feeble-bodied Abdurrahman may be; feeble-minded he certainly is not, although lately many of his actions have cast some serious doubt, both on his erstwhile reputation as a democratic reformer and as a capable political tactician.

But what political gain could there be for the embattled President, for example, by putting Marzuki in Marsilam's former post as Cabinet secretary? It is hardly likely that the move is to please the Golkar Party, since the post holds little power although it is one close to the center of power.

Marzuki, the attorney general before Lopa, admitted in a recent interview with the Far Eastern Economic Review that he could see no method to the President's actions. "He was simply reacting to events. That's not reform. Reform is taking initiatives."

Ostensibly, there is much truth in Marzuki's remark that the President has been alienating allies for quite some time -- and for unfathomable reasons -- abandoning reform for a political agenda and seemingly incapable of defining a coherent vision of Indonesia's future. Instead, a picture is emerging with increasing clarity of Abdurrahman Wahid as President as a most erratic head of state and head of government.

What all this adds up to is that there seems to be little hope of Indonesia getting out of its current multidimensional crisis under Abdurrahman's leadership. Either one can be considerate and the nation must try to weather its present crisis until 2004, when a new general election may offer another chance for an effective solution, or a more effective leadership must be put in place.

Let this also be a warning, however, to our legislators to put reason above emotion and the national interest above that of their own respective parties in taking their decisions in the upcoming special session of the People's Consultative Assembly in August. Let them not forget that it was their own parochial politicking that put Abdurrahman Wahid in the seat of the presidency in the first place.