Erratic leadership

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.