Feisal Tanjung blamed for attack on PDI office
NEW DELHI (JP): While his stand-off with his Cabinet minister Gen. Wiranto appears to be cooling down, President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid kept firing at Wiranto's senior, Gen. (ret) Feisal Tanjung, on Tuesday.
In a rare display of anger, the President insisted that Feisal was fully responsible for two attacks on him and on Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri when he was the armed forces chief. Abdurrahman said he would clarify his statement after he arrives home on Sunday.
"The fact is that Pak Feisal Tanjung ordered the raid of PDI headquarters. It was also Pak Feisal who instructed his officer to finish me in Cipasung," Abdurrahman said, referring to the forcible takeover of the headquarters of the Megawati-led Indonesian Democratic Party in July 1996 and the conspicuous efforts to unseat Abdurrahman as chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama in the 1994 congress in Tasikmalaya, West Java.
Abdurrahman also said Feisal, who served as the Indonesian Military (TNI) chief between 1993 and 1998, was involved in the ousting of PDI chairwoman Megawati in a government-backed congress in Medan. This occurred one month before the bloody attack on the PDI offices on Jl. Diponegoro in Central Java.
The government banned Megawati's PDI faction from the 1997 elections for fears that she would emerge a strong contender against ex-president Soeharto, who sought his seventh consecutive term.
The fall of Soeharto just one month after his reelection in May 1998 prepared the stage for political reforms that forced the government to allow Megawati's PDI Perjuangan to stand in the 1999 elections. Her party earned the most votes in the polls which have been hailed as the most democratic elections ever held in Indonesia.
On Sunday, Abdurrahman said that Feisal ordered Wiranto, who was then the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) chief, to "eliminate" him and Megawati.
Feisal denied the allegations on the following day, but stopped short of saying the President was telling a lie.
In Jakarta, the PDI Perjuangan deputy chairman Dimyati Hartono hailed Abdurrahman's assertion saying that the party has submitted evidence of Feisal's involvement in the 1996 attack on the police.
Besides Feisal, Dimyati said several military officers were involved in the attack including former TNI chief of social and political affairs Lt. Gen. (ret) Syarwan Hamid.
Political observer Johanes Kristiadi said the President's revelation serves as momentum to disclose past political crimes masterminded by the military.
"We should start now to open the cases of the past. The fact that hundreds of people have been killed should not be ignored," Kristiadi said in a seminar held by PDI Perjuangan on Tuesday.
Clarification
TNI top brass, meanwhile, were cautious of Abdurrahman's statements.
Chief of TNI territorial affairs Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo said that TNI would wait and request clarification from the President when he returned from an extended tour of European and Asian countries.
Agus said the armed forces would refrain from making any counter statements as Abdurrahman "does not aim at TNI to only attack a senior military leader".
"That's head-of-state remarks and we should clearly understand them. Therefore we will wait for his clarifications regarding the (ex-)president, related generals and TNI. That's what we can do," he said.
"And it's too early to speculate on the motive behind the statement. Gus Dur might have sources for his statement. We will meet the President as soon as he returns to find common understanding," he added.
Agus also stressed that within TNI, verification would also be done among the related generals.
Separately, TNI spokesman Air Rear Marshal Graito Usodo suggested that the armed forces should leave the controversy in the hands of the related generals as Abdurrahman did not intend to discredit TNI.
Meanwhile political critic from Research Institute for Democracy and Peace (RIDep) Hermawan Sulistyo speculated about Abdurrahman's intent to retaliate for what he has suffered in the past.
"What happened in the past with pro-democratic activists was political. Gus Dur must take care now that he's the President and his remarks are heard."
Hermawan warned that Abdurrahman was in the early phase of "a regime cleansing" with the military becoming the first target due to its close ties with Soeharto. (prb/jun/emf)