No threat to presidency: Gus Dur

No threat to presidency: Gus Dur

JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid played down
increasing calls for his resignation on Tuesday saying that he
didn't see "any serious threat" to his grip on power.

"No, I don't see any serious threat (to my presidency),"
Abdurrahman told a joint media conference with visiting German
President Johannes Rau.

Abdurrahman was speaking after talks with Rau at the Merdeka
Palace.

"The international media has the wrong impression of
Indonesia, that I am cornered and weakened by the situation
here," he said.

"But, I can say to you now that this isn't true and that we
have already passed the period of political crisis," the
President added.

This was Abdurrahman's second statement in three days voicing
his confidence that the political crisis would soon be over. He
said on Sunday the crisis that has been plaguing his 16-month-old
tenure would be settled in the coming two months.

Abdurrahman has been under pressure to step down following the
House of Representatives' decision to issue a memorandum of
censure on Feb. 1 for his alleged involvement in two financial
scandals.

The move could lead to an impeachment process against the
President.

However, Abdurrahman was upbeat, for the time being, about his
political future after the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), Golkar and the military withdrew their
support for expediting the special session of the People's
Consultative Assembly to impeach the President.

Abdurrahman was again displaying self-confidence when he
announced that he would go ahead with his two-week trip to the
Middle East and North Africa on Thursday.

A Cabinet source said last week that Abdurrahman had actually
been advised by top security and political ministers to cancel or
cut short the trip due to heightened political tension in the
country.

When asked to comment on a letter from the President's foreign
economic advisors, Abdurrahman said it was "important" and that
"from that report, we realized that we still have cronyism and
corruption."

"We also have a lot of inefficiency, but in order to improve
anything we first have to strengthen existing laws, including
laws on taxation, customs as well as improving government
bureaucracy," Abdurrahman said.

Abdurrahman did not say, however, whether the government would
bow down to the central bank independence issue.

Gus Dur, as the President is popularly called, also admitted
that the country's judicial system remains one of the nation's
major weaknesses.

"We have to improve the quality of the judges here, so a lot
of things have to be done in order to achieve that," he said.

In a letter to Abdurrahman, which was made public on Tuesday,
advisors said that "time and again economic progress and reform
is impeded by a sense of pervasive cronyism and corruption."

The four advisors are Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew,
former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former Japan
ambassador to Washington Nobuo Matsunaga and treasurer to
Germany's opposition Christian Democrats Ulrich Cartellieri.

They also urged Abdurrahman to continue the government's
efforts to revamp the country's judicial system.

"In any country, dealing with such problems would require long
and sustained efforts. What seems essential is that you signal to
the country in unmistakable terms the necessity of undertaking
that effort," the advisors said.

"We believe Indonesia is poised at a critical juncture. It
must build on a year of promising but still highly fragile and
incomplete economic recovery," the letter said.

"That effort would be surely jeopardized - indeed made
fruitless - by failure to address certain issues, some endemic,
some new," it added. (byg)