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.