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)