What's up Gus?

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.