What next?

President Abdurrahman Wahid was not far off the mark in concluding that his censure by the legislature, and the preceding investigation of corruption allegations against him, was nothing more than an attempt to oust him. It was never a real attempt to call him to account, if indeed he had erred as alleged by his critics. Responding to the memorandum of censure, the President told the House on Wednesday that it had no real case against him, and warned that the House would be violating the Constitution if it went ahead with its campaign to impeach him.

The memorandum was issued on Feb. 1 on the basis of the House's investigation of the Buloggate and Bruneigate scandals, both of which implicated the President and his close aides. When the House's investigation started in August, it was already clear then that the objective of this exercise went beyond the House simply exercising its constitutional duty of providing checks and balances in respect of the presidency.

By then, relations between the President and the majority of factions in the House had soured greatly. The two scandals provided a window of opportunity for the President's critics to attack him and, as it is clear by now, to remove him from office. It mattered little whether the President was involved in the two scandals or otherwise. The slightest suggestion of his role in the scandals, as found by the House's investigating committee, was enough to form the basis for the issuing of the memorandum in February.

The fact that many legislators in the House had rejected the President's response before it was even delivered on Wednesday underscored their real motives. Whatever response the President gave, the majority of the House would still want to proceed, with even more vigor, along the road leading to his impeachment.

While recognizing the maneuvers as an attempt to oust him, the President seemed to have missed -- or chose to ignore -- the real message that the memorandum had sent to him: That he no longer has the support of the majority in the House. Eight of the 10 factions in the House endorsed the memorandum, even if the document was wrought with many weaknesses as the President pointed out in his response on Wednesday. That shows how little support there is left for him in the legislature.

President Abdurrahman is not entirely blameless for the current state of affairs. He, more than anybody else, contributed to the tension and the eventual stand off with the legislature. He antagonized the House so frequently, almost from the day he took up office, that he undermined the national consensus that led to his election in October 1999. He became overconfident for a man whose own National Awakening Party (PKB) only won 11 percent of the total vote in the 1999 election.

Admittedly, the President faced a daunting task of overseeing Indonesia's transition from a repressed to an open society, and of supervising the restoration of the economy after its worst recession in decades. But that should have been all the more reason to secure the support of the majority in the House, rather than to pick new quarrels. His penchant for controversy did not help. Instead, it only eroded his political support.

The power struggle is far from over. The President has given his response and the House will have to decide on its reply in the coming days or weeks. A second memorandum is a possible scenario if the House is consistent with its campaign to try to impeach the President.

There will obviously be a heated debate on the fine points of the President's response. And no doubt there will be street demonstrations for and against the President in the coming days to add to the pressure. Once again, the country will be plunged into another period of uncertainty as the power struggle continues.

While there is a small chance that the President may win the battle, he will not likely win the war. The memorandum of censure contained so many weaknesses that there is a possibility for him to beat his opponents, or that some legislators may back down from the campaign to impeach him. But that does not negate the fact that he has lost a lot of the support and goodwill he had in the legislature, something that he himself readily admitted on Wednesday. Even if he survives the process, he will no longer be able to count on the support of the majority of the House factions. That being the case, his administration is likely to become even more ineffective than it is today.