What's up Gus?

For the past six months, the nation has learned to cope with the eccentricities of President Abdurrahman Wahid's leadership. People in this country are actually beginning to accept his unconventional and at times controversial style as long as he delivers the goods. As many of his supporters would say, judge not the President by the process, but by his achievements.

The way he tamed the wayward Indonesian Military (TNI) and the way he disposed of TNI strongman Gen. Wiranto, are some of the fine examples of his unconventional but successful formula in leading this nation on the reform path towards a civil society. Many people are even willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he fired two of his top economics ministers last month, if it means strengthening his grip over the direction of economic policy.

But when Gus Dur, as the President is affectionately called, appointed his younger brother Hasyim Wahid, or Gus Im, to the post of deputy at the Indonesia Banking Restructuring Agency (IBRA), the President may have crossed the line of propriety.

All his maneuvers, including the appointment and firing of Cabinet members, have been within the constitutional limitations accorded to his office. Hasyim's appointment undoubtedly falls within this category. But the question that the President has to answer is whether nepotism is proper and ethical.

Gus Im's appointment betrays the reformation movement which began just over two years ago and of which Gus Dur himself was an important leader. KKN -- the Indonesian acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism -- has become hallmark of the previous regimes of Soeharto and Habibie. It is the very thing that the reformation movement has firmly rejected and hoped to wipe out.

Fighting KKN became the battle cry for just about every political party contesting the general election last June, including Gus Dur's own National Awakening Party (PKB). When Gus Dur was chosen in October as a compromise president by the main election winners, naturally, people placed much hope in him to lead the nation in this battle against KKN.

The appointment of Gus Im to a top post in a strategic agency such as IBRA has deflated the people's expectation of Gus Dur's leadership in the anti KKN war. Without any financial background, he was put in the agency simply by virtue of his connection to the head of state. And he will undoubtedly invoke his special ties with the President as he "knocks on the doors" of IBRA's bad debtors, telling them it's time to pay up.

Even assuming that Gus Im's appointment was made with the best of intentions -- to make sure that the government recovers all the money owed to it by private companies through IBRA -- surely there are other far more suitable candidates that the President could have picked without causing a public outcry.

Viewed from any angle, Gus Im's appointment is nepotism in every sense of the word. There is no other way of getting around it. One thing that we have learned from the Soeharto and Habibie regimes is that nepotism is so open to abuse and potential conflicts of interests that, sooner or later, it will rear its ugly head.

Gus Im's recruitment could hardly be compared to the appointment of Gus Dur's daughters as the President's assistants because their jobs are limited and clearly defined: to physically guide and assist the President who is almost blind. Nor is it comparable to the appointments of Marsilam Simanjuntak and Bondan Gunawan as his secretaries because these two are well known to share the same democratic visions as the President.

There is no justification for the appointment of his brother to a high-level position in IBRA. By defending the appointment, the President has undermined the trust that the nation gave him in October. For his own good as well as the nation's, Gus Dur should remove his brother, or better still, Gus Im should voluntarily resign from IBRA. By keeping Gus Im in IBRA, the President's image and credibility, and therefore popular support, will go steadily downhill.