IHT: Be Quiet While Indonesia's Chess Master Makes His Moves (fwd)

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 06 Mar 2000 02:44:11
From: tapol@gn.apc.org
Reply-To: "Conference act.indonesia" <indonesia-act@igc.org>
To: Recipients of indonesia-act <indonesia-act@igc.org>
Subject: IHT: Be Quiet While Indonesia's Chess Master Makes His Moves

From: TAPOL <tapol@gn.apc.org>
Subject: IHT: Be Quiet While Indonesia's Chess Master Makes His Moves

Received from Joyo Indonesian News

International Herald Tribune
Monday, March 6, 2000

Opinion

Be Quiet While Indonesia's Chess Master Makes His Moves

By Stanley A. Weiss International Herald Tribune

GSTAAD, Switzerland - Indonesia's president is a chess master in the game of 
politics, a man with a thousand maneuvers.

Abdurrahman Wahid, an ailing, nearly blind Muslim scholar, is Indonesia's 
most admired and beloved individual. He is known to all as Gus Dur, or 
honored brother. Many venerate him as a living saint. To some he is the just 
king, the most mysterious of Javanese shadow play heroes, whose appearance 
signals the end of times of chaos and the beginning of periods of peace.

To others he is the Javanese puppet Semar, a buffoon-like character who 
killed his enemies with razor-sharp intelligence. Like a knight on a 
chessboard, Semar knew - and Gus Dur knows - that the best way to move from A 
to B is not ina straight line.

The queen is the most powerful piece. Megawati Sukarnoputri was the princess, 
waiting all too regally for her coronation. The daughter of Indonesia's first 
president, she was brought up in the palace and then witnessed her father's 
overthrow, humiliation and death.

A housewife, she entered politics in 1987 and became the only longtime 
opposition leader to her father's oppressor, President Suharto. When he fell, 
Mrs. Megawati saw the chance to transform her mass support into a return to 
the palace. Her party won a large plurality in parliamentary elections, with 
three times the votes for Gus Dur.

The saint and the housewife formed a partnership. But she spent the 
presidential campaign in sphinx-like silence, never reaching out to the 
Muslim leaders and underestimating the chess master. Gus Dur won the 
presidency and, in a move to stop pro-Megawati riots, named her as his vice 
president, saying they made a perfect team. ''I can't see and she can't 
talk.''

The rook is the second most important piece. General Wiranto, former head of 
the military, tried to be kingmaker. Playing that game with President Wahid, 
he ended up being plucked from the political chessboard like a lowly pawn.

General Wiranto had adroitly moved from presidential adjutant to commander of 
the armed forces, effectively running the government of transitional 
President B.J. Habibie after the East Timor massacres began.

At first he supported Mrs. Megawati's run for president, but when Mr. Wahid 
was elected he turned on her so that he could become vice president and 
control the new government. His fatal miscalculation was dropping out of the 
race and giving up the state's coercive apparatus on Mr. Wahid's promise of a 
key cabinet position.

Curiously, this vain, dapper general, a past master at walking political 
tightropes, underestimated the chess master. The two clashed over how to deal 
with violence in the remote provinces and General Wiranto's refusal to 
resign. When the match ended, the general was no longer the coordinating 
minister for defense and security, and his military and political careers 
were finished.

The bishop never moves straight. Amien Rais is a Muslim firebrand. 
Charismatic and self-promoting, he often shoots from the lip with 
anti-Christian, anti-Chinese or anti-Semitic statements. With Mr. Wahid and 
others, he was a leader of the pro-democracy Muslims, the single largest 
constituency involved in the effort to overthrow Mr. Suharto.

Mr. Rais created the Islamic coalition that Gus Dur skillfully manipulated to 
win the presidency, and is now chairman of Indonesia's highest legislative 
body. He has alternately befriended and undermined Mr. Wahid, but he has 
never underestimated the chess master. He represents the mainly urban 
white-collar professionals and intellectuals espousing a less tolerant, more 
doctrinaire Islam.

Gus Dur's followers practice an inclusive, accommodating, Sufi-like Islam. He 
may be the only leader capable of bringing these two major competing strains 
of belief together.

He has thus far successfully neutralized his political opponents. He is 
taking important steps to bring the military under civilian control. But 
there is much more to be done to secure the future of Indonesia's 212 million 
people.

It is less a nation than a random string of islands, and there are separatist 
movements in provinces throughout the archipelago. The economy is shaky at 
best. Ethnic violence after the fall of President Suharto caused 
Chinese-Indonesian bankers and businessmen to flee the country.

Most important, there are those who reject Gus Dur's ''sweet face of Islam'' 
with its tolerance for all religions. Islamic fringe groups are trying to 
destabilize the government.

The United States should be like the audience at a chess match - quiet. But 
Washington should expand aid, support World Bank and IMF projects and 
reinstate programs for advanced education of Indonesian officers in America. 
It should encourage public and private foundations to join with Indonesian 
organizations to create community programs, scholarships and other services.

The endgame should bring a prosperous, tolerant, democratic Indonesia. So 
far, President Wahid has shown that he knows the right moves.

The writer is chairman and founder of Business Executives for National 
Security, an organization of U.S. business leaders. He contributed this 
comment to the International Herald Tribune.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904   Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

26 years - and still going strong 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++