For a country already deeply fractured and full of communal divisions, a crisis at the center is the last thing Indonesia needs. What it requires if it is to survive as a nation is unity among its leaders.
Sadly, the country seems to have a death wish. Its politicians and military leaders are driving it to destruction. And not just them: too many of its peoples seem hell-bent on violently imposing their views on everyone else, whether in pursuit of secession, independence, sectarian division, or the removal or retention of a political figure. But it is the politicians who are primarily guilty. They have whipped up and orchestrated their followers’ emotions for their own political purposes. They do not put Indonesia’s interests first; they are interested only in their own.
Those who would remove President Abdurrahman Wahid are motivated not by a desire to remove a corrupt president from office and replace him with someone more worthy: in any event, the allegations that inspired parliament to begin impeachment proceeding against him have been shown to be without evidence. What is obvious in parliament’s continuation of proceedings is a desire for revenge against a president who has humiliated it, combined with a grasp for power on the part of the vice president’s supporters.
This is politics in the raw — greedy, malevolent and grasping; and without a concern for the well-being of the country. President Wahid is a culpable as those who wish to remove him from office. It may not be his fault that the economic crisis which brought down the Suharto regime and its technocratic successor has not been resolved, or that sectarian divisions and secessionist uprisings have not ended (indeed his attempts at mediation and compromise were always more likely to succeed than the brute force preferred by the military). But his confrontational and eccentric style of government has served only to alienate those in parliament and the country whose support was desperately needed. Without their backing he had no chance of standing up to the military who have made disguise of their resentment at loss of power.
There is no chance of that now. His threat of a state of emergency and to dissolve parliament on the grounds of deteriorating law and order — the only threat of violence comes from his own supporters — have blown apart what hopes he might have had of rebuilding political bridges. His encouragement of supporters to threaten parliament was an act of folly. The fact that he has now attempted to sack his security chief and three other ministers who can see that his chosen path is likely to result in bloodshed and violence shows his power base to be crumbling fast. Such provocative action will not save his presidency. All it will do is provoke new militancy. Nor will it win him any support abroad. Increasingly deserted and desperate, the only way that he can survive is if he turns, cap in hand, to the military and surrenders himself totally to their will.
They might just go for it, reckoning that, weak as he is, he could be controlled. Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is certain to be sworn in as his replacement if parliament survives to vote him out of office in the next few weeks, would be a far less malleable proposition. But none of this is to Indonesia’s benefit. In their lust for power, its politicians — all of them — gamble with the country’s future. Whether it is getting rid of Wahid, or keeping him in power, neither will produce stability. The confrontation embarked upon by both sides cannot result in a government strong enough to resolve the country’s problems. The likelihood is that it will be internationally isolated, a no-go area for investment, in worse economic crisis than present, and prone to even greater violence and rebellion.
It is not quite too late to pull back from the brink. But without a swift compromise that results in a strong, acceptable and legitimate government at the center, the politicians may soon find that what they have been fighting over so vehemently turns out to be a corpse.
