Word: wahid
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President Abdurrahman Wahid may be a picture of physical frailty, but he fights smart - as former military leader General Wiranto discovered Sunday. Wiranto, who had defied Wahid's order to step down as minister for security, was summarily suspended from the cabinet Sunday, even though the president had indicated only a day earlier that the general could remain in office pending the outcome of an official investigation into his role in last year's East Timor violence. The standoff had fueled rumors of a coup against Wahid, who had asked for the resignation of Wiranto - the military leader who engineered...
...Wahid's trademark political skill has been keeping his enemies off-balance, divided and isolated. Although that's required 180-degree turnabouts on some policy questions, it's effectively neutralized most challenges thus far to his presidency - an office he acquired only by his supreme skill at backroom politicking. Despite finishing a distant third in last spring's polls, Wahid managed to shut out the presumptive president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, by cobbling together a voting bloc of Islamic parties and Suharto supporters, and then immediately headed off the violent reaction in the streets by naming Megawati as his deputy. But while...
...whose only common history was colonization by the Dutch - and it has effectively governed Indonesia for most of the past four decades. Although mounting violence by separatists in Aceh, Papua and elsewhere - as well as between Muslims and Christians in the Moluccas - is threatening to break the country apart, Wahid has restrained the military from maintaining the traditional order by brute force. The waning of their own authority may make the top brass more sympathetic to Wiranto's own plight, while the nationalist party of Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri has fiercely opposed Wahid's proposal to give Indonesia's various...
Talk about living dangerously... As if firing Indonesia's most powerful military man amid rumors of a coup weren't risky enough, President Abdurrahman Wahid chose to do it by phone while on a two-week trip to Europe. The bad news for Wahid is that General Wiranto, disgraced by a government report this week that held him responsible for some of last year's violence in East Timor, doesn't appear to be going anywhere: He even attended a cabinet meeting Wednesday, in defiance of the President's orders. Although Wiranto had been removed from command of the armed...
...Wiranto, the military and Megawati aren't the only ones with axes to grind - former Suharto supporters both in the military and in the private sector are threatened by the new government's anti-corruption efforts. But Wahid is a wily politician whose coalition-building skills were evident last year when he shut out Megawati for the top job despite his relatively tiny share of the electoral vote. And until now, he's kept his opponents off balance and divided through skillfully alternating between concessions and challenges. Still, his looming showdown with Wiranto may prove to be his toughest battle...