Gus Dur's art of war

By Susanto Pudjomartono

JAKARTA (JP): There is no doubt about it -- last weekend's battle between President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid and the majority of factions in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) was a battle of wits, which should be recorded in detail in the annals of Indonesian history.

Never before have we been able to witness such a blow-to-blow fight, in which each and every move met a counter move, creating tension and confusion to both parties.

There is also no doubt that in that battle the Gus Dur camp was more tricky and sometimes the more devious and deceptive in its maneuvers, trying to find every single weakness in their opponent's defenses and using every possible legal loophole, thereby creating an impression that any means was justified.

A battle between the state's executive power and the legislature is quite a common occurrence in any democratic country. But the unusual manner in which Gus Dur fought to cling on to his presidency makes it worthwhile examining.

Many people -- friends and foes alike -- are baffled, to the point of being mystified, as to why Gus Dur resorted to the use of such undemocratic tactics to defend himself. He has repeatedly threatened to bring millions of his loyal supporters from East Java to Jakarta to "occupy" the parliament building to stop the MPR special session from convening, thus thwarting any attempt to impeach and oust him.

He has put pressure on the Attorney General to investigate and arrest a number of business tycoons -- indeed a popular move to win the people's hearts, but at the same time, as he has made clear, to have some of his political foes investigated and, if need be, detained as well.

He has tried unsuccessfully to sack and replace generals of the Armed Forces (TNI), whom he considered to have disobeyed him. To a certain point, he has been more successful putting a trusted man as acting police chief -- a move that prompted the Assembly to call a special session.

The national police force is assigned to secure the MPR session. By having his man in the top job, Gus Dur may have thought that he had a strategic ally who could help him in the event that he needed one.

These tactics have raised a lot of eyebrows. There seems to be no logic in them. Some observers are at a loss and have come to the conclusion that Gus Dur has been practicing Chinese "drunken master" movements, so unpredictable have his tactics become.

Gus Dur is no doubt a master of deception. Sometimes, people have believed that he was bluffing, but who could be sure that in what seemed like nothing there was actually something?

Judging from the way he governs -- where an absence of a sense of reality is obvious -- one can be misled to conclude that even in defending his presidency Gus Dur has no clear-cut strategy.

On the contrary, he certainly has one and it can be described in only one sentence: fight to the bitter end. This includes threats, disinformation, misinterpretation, devide et impera (divide and rule) tactics -- anything. In short, the end justifies the means.

Although trying to understand Gus Dur's logic in his present state of mind is a near impossible task, one can guess, or try to decipher, how his mind is working.

Gus Dur somehow believes that he has been unfairly and cruelly victimized. He perceives that he has been legitimately elected as president, possibly with some kind of divine intervention or even in a divine grand design. And suddenly, long before his term in office has come to its natural end, those same people who had supported his nomination to begin with are now turning against him and are even trying to oust him. He believes that the DPR has tyrannized him and now Megawati has also abandoned him. In short, his former friends are conspiring to topple him.

Hence, Gus Dur sees that he has every right not only to defend himself and his rightly-earned presidential seat, but also to launch a counter attack against his "enemies" and possibly also to take revenge on them. His outburst weeks ago that he would unseat Amien Rais as the Assembly speaker if he should manage to hold on to his presidency is proof of this reasoning.

Thus, Gus Dur sees himself as being at war. He believes he is fighting to defend his rights. As for his strategy, he relies, not on the western strategies of Clausewitz, Liddle Hart or Patton, but of a totally different school.

No one denies that Gus Dur is a very intelligent and intellectual man. He devoured books of different kinds, the way he eats his favorite peanuts. He has a photographic memory, which explains why even now, when he can no longer read, he is sometimes still capable of delivering high quality speeches with correct quotations.

Among the many books he read in his younger days were silat or kungfu novels. On a number of occasions and in a number of recent conversations he fondly recalls his favorite stories. Several times he has likened himself to the character in those kungfu novels.

For example, several months ago he said that he was like Kwee Cing who mastered the Hang Liong Sip Pat Ciang (Eighteen Moves to Conquer the Dragon). "I am using only a few moves, but look, my enemies are already in confusion, aren't they?".

Through reading kungfu novels Gus Dur learned about Musashi and Sun Tzu, the famous Japanese and Chinese strategist. Anyone who reads the lines of Sun Tzu's Art of War, for example, cannot help but draw a parallel between the book and Gus Dur's tactics:

"Use anger to throw them into disarray, use humility to make them haughty. Tire them by flight, cause division among them. Attack when they are unprepared, make your move when they do not expect it.

"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."

It is also through kungfu novels that Gus Dur learned about the famous "Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China". Take one, for example: "Clamor in the East, Attack in the West. Spread misleading information about your intentions, or make false suggestions in order to induce the opponent to concentrate his defenses on one front and thereby leave another front vulnerable to attack".

Here is another: "Make something out of nothing. Create a false idea in the mind of the opponent and fix it in his mind as a reality. In particular, this means that you convey the impression that you have what you do not, to the end that you may appear formidable and thus actually obtain a level of security that you had not enjoyed before".

Many of us sometimes think that Gus Dur is out of his mind. Could this be a trick?

One of the 36 strategies says: "Feign madness but keep your balance: Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability, until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack".

We have learned about the strategy of sowing discord when Gus Dur, a few weeks ago, started to befriend Rahmawati, the younger sister of Megawati, to have her start to criticize her older sister.

What if all else fails? The last of the 36 strategies stipulates retreat: "When your side is losing, there remain only three choices: surrender, compromise, or escape.

"Surrender is complete defeat, compromise is half-defeat, but escape is not defeat. As long as you are not defeated, you still have a chance."

Does this mean that we will see a prolonged fight, even if the Assembly does impeach Gus Dur?

The writer is Chief Editor of The Jakarta Post.