Indonesia is heading for a potentially explosive situation. The President Abdurrahman Wahid is facing impeachment hearings in Indonesia’s Parliament beginning on August 1. The impeachment is over corruption charges involving at the alleged raising and misallocation of party funds. There is no question of any personal gain on the part of Mr Wahid and a lot of the evidence appears to be quite weak. However, Mr Wahid quite reasonably fears that he will not be judged on the merits of the charges against him but rather on political matters.
As a consequence, he has been wondering aloud whether he should declare a state of emergency. He was quoted as telling a students’ forum, “I can issue a state of emergency. I have it the power to do it, but would it be a wise decision?” Alternatively, he mused, that he might merely suspend parliament in order to avoid the impeachment hearing.
This is dangerous and foolish talk and indicates a lack of hard political acumen. If Mr Wahid was even thinking such things it would have been wiser to keep them to himself.
He put his opponents on notice. Members of Parliament have now gathered in the capital two weeks early. They are preparing themselves to convene a snap impeachment hearing should Mr Wahid declare the state of emergency or attempt to suspend parliament.
Poised in the middle of this stand-off are the military and the police. It may well be that the military decides that it will not support any presidential decree for a state of emergency or suspension of parliament, allowing the MPs to continue with an impeachment hearing. Mr Wahid himself has acknowledged that army and police support for him is quite weak.
It would it be a tragedy for Indonesia if the MPs misunderstood their constitutional role and forced Mr Wahid into a corner. Indonesia has a system of an executive President, somewhat akin to that in the United States. It is not a parliamentary system like that in Australia. The difference should be crucial. Parliament should only impeached Mr Wahid if there is definite and convincing evidence of corruption or some other crime. It should not topple him merely because the political climate has changed and some other party leader feels that he or she could muster a majority support in the parliament and a takeover the presidency, in the same way that a Prime Minister might be defeated on the floor of the House on some legislative or all policy motion. However, it seems that the supporters of Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri think they have the numbers to topple Mr Wahid. Megawati supporters also think that they would have the support of the army and police. This is because Megawati has always maintained a far stronger nationalist position than Mr Wahid. She objected to any Indonesian support for self-determination or independence in East Timor and she has stated that she would not tolerate separatist moves in West Papua, Aceh or any other province of Indonesia. This is the talk that the military likes to hear. Leading members of the army have that profited in the past from Javanese imperialism and have viewed with alarm any suggestion by Mr Wahid to grant any form of autonomy to any outlying provinces.
This stand-off in Jakarta is not the usual one of a President grimly clinging to power against forces of democracy and legal process that have good cause to remove him,. Rather it is a power grab by people who have enriched themselves in the past and who do not like the forces of democracy. It is a shame that Mr Wahid is unlikely to get a trial on the merits (or to have the trial dropped altogether) and it would be a shame if he were removed, because it is only through dialogue and self-determination that the violence in Indonesia will end.