What is brooding in the air?
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