What is brooding in the air?

What will August be like for President Abdurrahman Wahid? Will it be a mere routine of the annual president's accountability speech to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) or an impeachment-like process? Everybody has been touching on the subject on almost every radio or television talk show and also in news commentaries, which has been part of wishful thinking, particularly among the opposition camps.

The people most responsible in getting the ball rolling, at least according to some media accounts, have been MPR Chairman Amien Rais and House Speaker Akbar Tandjung, who are known to have eyed the country's presidential post in the past. While Abdurrahman Wahid was on an overseas trip recently, both men "had warned" the former to be more careful with his political statements and to avoid making constitutional missteps lest an impeachment process be considered next August.

The situation has become more confusing for outsiders as the two mentioned politicians have often retracted their statements, indicating there was nothing in their minds to even slightly point in that direction. The objective of their criticism of the President was designed to "correct" Abdurrahman Wahid's steps and put him back on the right track. But, of course, words of politicians are rarely to be trusted.

While ideally economic issues or the situation of state unemployment or the plight of teachers or Indonesia's massive international debt burden should have been their pursuit of debate, they tended to be more willing to comply with the "impeachment" game, aiming at truly pulling the President down, the rumors of which the President himself has come to believe in, or so it seems.

President Abdurrahman Wahid, being a cleric head of state, has said he is willing to "forgive" the communists and retract a ban on the former Indonesian Communist Party, imposed by the MPR under the Soeharto regime dating back from 1966. The two politicians strongly contested this as endangering the national security. The media and the opposition have gleefully played up the dissenting views. The Armed Forces pretend to be neutral.

Most people with common sense and a realistic look at the power balance believe August will cause no problems for Abdurrahman.

GANDHI SUKARDI

Jakarta