It's all up to Gus Dur

It's all up to Gus Dur

Those seeking to remove President Abdurrahman Wahid from
office apparently will stop at nothing in their campaign. After
the House of Representatives issued a memorandum of censure
against the head of state, we have seen a host of other measures
and proposals bandied about, all with the ultimate goal of
removing the President from office now, rather than in 2004 when
his term officially ends.

Rather than follow the mechanisms of the House's memorandum of
censure, which would take about five months before opening the
possibility of impeachment, critics and opponents of the
President have been pressuring him to step aside, either
gracefully or by force, immediately.

Some have suggested he step down rather than being disgraced
by having to go through the impeachment process. To add to the
pressure, there have been various demonstrations demanding his
resignation.

Failing to get their message across to the President, his
opponents are toying with another approach: immediately convening
a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly, the only
institution with the power to remove the President. Again, this
proposal has been accompanied by demonstrations.

And amid the demonstrations and counterdemonstrations by the
President's loyal supporters, we have heard various veiled
threats of a military takeover if the situation in the country
further degenerates.

The latest scheme presented to the nation is for the President
to "share power" with Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri. From
the explanation, however, this clearly entails the President
handing over executive power, which has been vested in him by the
Constitution, to his deputy.

By now it must be clear the real objective of this whole
political exercise is to achieve Abdurrahman's ouster. It also is
clear that his removal has increasingly become the favored option
of an ever growing section of the population. While this may not
be the desire of the majority, it certainly is the prevailing
wish of the country's political elite.

The mess in which the country currently finds itself must be
attributed in part -- in large part, critics would say -- to
Abdurrahman's ineffectual leadership. To his critics -- including
many who were responsible for putting him in the presidential
seat in the first place -- his shortcomings and leadership
failures far outweigh whatever contributions he has made to the
nation. In short, he has become politically dispensable.

While they may have a strong case in wanting the President to
step down, they seem to be at a complete loss as to how to
convince him it would be in the best interests of the nation for
him to do so. Instead of bluntly informing the President of the
grave situation facing the country, they resorted to methods that
were unethical, if not unconstitutional, in their search for ways
to unseat him.

In their obsession to bring him down, they found the inquiry
into the Brunei and Bulog financial scandals their most potent
weapon, ignoring the fact that the US$5 million involved in the
two scandals is a paltry sum compared to the billions plundered
by the Soeharto regime.

The President, who will not take this criticism lying down,
has found legal or constitutional flaws in virtually every move
and proposal made by his critics. There are, for example,
question marks about the legality of the House special committee
which conducted the inquiry into the scandals, and there are also
inconsistencies between the House's memorandum of censure and the
committee's findings on which the memorandum was based.

There are also valid questions about the constitutionality of
the demand for an immediate special session of the Assembly, and
even about the latest suggestion that the President share power
with the Vice President.

One can argue endlessly whether the President still have the
popular and moral legitimacy to lead, but he still has the
Constitution behind him, which matters the most. One can almost
be certain that whatever trick his political opponents next pull
out of their hat, the President will find constitutional or legal
flaws in their maneuver.

This is because the 1945 Constitution confers so much power on
the President. Ours, after all, is a presidential system of
government. Even after undergoing a series of amendments, the
office of the president remains constitutionally powerful. No
force can bring the President down, unless accompanied by threat
of violence as was the case with Sukarno in 1966, or by people's
power as with Soeharto in 1998.

The way it stands at the moment, whether Gus Dur steps down or
not is something only he can determine. His opponents can only do
so much, and the rest of us can only pray the President will be
guided by wisdom and arrive at a decision that is right for all
of us.