President, legislature on collision course again
SINGAPORE: Indonesia's President and legislature are again on a collision course, as legislators prepare to censure Abdurrahman Wahid a second time next week over questionable financial dealings. From all accounts, there is more multi-party agreement now than for the first motion in February.
Crucially, the move reportedly has the support of Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who has sought admirably through the months of Abdurrahman's capricious management to avoid displays of disloyalty and dissension at the top.
She has been a model deputy -- supportive despite provocations, unthreatening and quick to dampen demands from within her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle that she dislodge the unpopular President.
If it is her judgment that a renewed censure is in order, Abdurrahman's position would be greatly eroded. Unavoidably, an open split in the leadership will sharpen tensions in Jakarta and bring in its train all manner of ill consequences. Indonesia needs to show confidence it can cope with its problems, not add to the impression of drift.
For good or ill, the censure motion is a constitutional process. If it is presented, it would only authenticate the will of the people as expressed through the House of Representatives. Abdurrahman, just as legitimately, can disprove the allegations and still carry the day.
The worry is that a process mandated by law could be thwarted by extraneous, extra-legal means. In an unwise display of agitation, Abdurrahman spoke last week of a "rebellion" if Parliament were to turn on him.
He said he had 400,000 of his supporters from the Nahdlatul Ulama movement, his power base, who would protect him from his political enemies. Of the many who would be descending on Jakarta from East Java and Sumatra, he said: "... you can see it is a nationwide rebellion against the ways of the legislature." This is not what Indonesians would expect of their head of state.
Open incitement to civil disobedience, even violence, is an extraordinary disregard for the rule of law elected officers of the state are sworn to uphold. Abdurrahman is described by his critics as erratic and mercurial; he need not have to reinforce also their doubts about his fitness to govern.
The divisiveness in the body politic can be healed, if that is at all possible, only by constitutional means. And it is solely Abdurrahman's responsibility to make it happen. The opposition legislators are poised to challenge him.
It is their constitutional prerogative occasioned, in some ways, by his own doing. The military and police are not treating his threat of civil disorder as a game of bluff to see who blinks first. They will have 42,000 men deployed during the period of the parliamentary session beginning on Monday. Abdurrahman can draw back from the brink by sticking to the dictates of the legislature.
If the House votes to censure him again, he has 30 days to make his defense. Only if the House is unsatisfied with his response would it invoke impeachment proceedings in the People's Consultative Assembly, the higher chamber. He can still prevail at the first step, or the second.
It will not help the Republic and the presidency if he were to defy an organ of state, or treat it with disdain. In the February session, he responded to the censure by questioning the standing of the investigation panel which examined two transfers of money, the subject of the complaint.
The House did not think he had cleared its doubts. Abdurrahman should keep the monetary probe within its technical bounds.
He should not turn it around into a dark plot against his person and office.
-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network