Word: wahid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...risk now is that Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, will fall apart just as Wahid's presidency did. The country is in deep trouble. It is emerging painfully from 32 years of the Suharto dictatorship, an era of forced social engineering and epic plunder. As the center collapses, ancient tribal and religious feuds have revived across the archipelago of 13,000 islands; 3,500 died in the violence last year. Unemployment is estimated at 40%, while corruption and economic bungling have kept foreign investment at "sub-zero," as a diplomat puts it. Most worrying of all, many...
...moderate and a reformer, Wahid came to office with high expectations as Indonesia's first democratically elected President. But his sheer orneriness was a fatal flaw; in less than two years, 22 ministers left his Cabinet. And though he inherited respect as a hereditary Muslim religious leader, Wahid was dangerously uninformed about the true level of his support. Toward the end, he shunned many advisers and retreated into the world of supernatural omens and spirits...
...Wahid's credit, his departure was at least peaceful--no small achievement in a city where the practice of rent-a-crowd is so standardized that slum enforcers print up rate cards. (For $2, you get a supporter for three hours; banners and chants are extra.) The question is whether Megawati can maintain a semblance of order. She has stronger backing than Wahid in parliament. And the military likes her: they share a common abhorrence of the separatist fever sweeping through Aceh and Papua (the former Irian Jaya) provinces. Her dynastic birthright helps too. Megawati is the daughter of Sukarno...
...Megawati's critics say her preference for public silence masks a dim intellect. That may be too harsh, but she has few discernible beliefs other than a garbled echo of her father's nationalism and a disdain for regional autonomy. On July 22, when Wahid tried to declare a state of emergency and dissolve parliament, Megawati went to the movies to see Shrek with her grandchildren. On her second day in office, when she might have been lobbying the national assembly for her pick for Vice President, she attended a fashion show at a posh Jakarta hotel...
...past few months, as Wahid bickered with parliament, the military took the offensive. Security forces moved three more battalions into the oil- and gas-rich province of Aceh; there are now 40,000 troops and police there. The army has burned villages and kidnapped suspected collaborators of the Free Aceh Movement. Often these missing Acehnese turn up on the side of the road, shot to death after being tortured. "The military is using brute force to eliminate everything in its path--including civilians," says a Western diplomat in Jakarta. For all Wahid's flaws, he tried to improve the military...