Feisal Tanjung blamed for attack on PDI office

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)