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Indonesia: Megawati Set To Replace Wahid With Amien Rais’s Support
by Kazi Mahmood
JAKARTA (IslamOnline) - Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri has said she is ready to replace the embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia. She, however, does not want him to be removed unconstitutionally, she said on Thursday.
Megawati’s Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) is believed to have teamed with Amien Rais’s National Mandate Party (PAN) in a strategic alliance to strengthen their political agendas.
Supporters of the PAN told IslamOnline that both parties has been negotiating for a long time on how to win more votes in future general elections in Indonesia.
The PAN, which has a power base in Johore, Malaysia, seems to have decided on a formal alliance with the PDI-P, IslamOnline was told.
Both parties have won contested posts in several strategic cities and villages recently and has are due to team up to form either an opposition alliance or an alliance that could govern the country until the 2004 elections.
Amien Rais said he might consider being the vice president under Megawati even though he insisted that to him, the presidency would be valid only if his party or an alliance in which his party is tied up could win the elections with a large majority.
“I will become president only if my party wins an elections with a majority. That would take time,” he reportedly said last month, at the height of the crisis that sparked between him and the ailing president Wahid.
This is the first time that Megawati said she was willing to be Indonesia’s next President. She had earlier said it was better to be a party president than to handle the shaky country’s presidency.
IslamOnline was also told by Johore supporters of the PAN that their party teamed up with Megawati in a bid to force her to be president and to remove the current president.
They said it was not necessary that Abdurrahman would remain president until 2004, even though he seemed to have the tacit support of a majority of legislators in the Indonesian Lower and Upper houses of Parliament.
The supporters told IslamOnline that the deal was to have Megawati president for at least two to three years. The aim was to recover a large sum of money in the order of several millions of U.S. dollars, which are stuck in Swiss banks.
The money is said to belong to Megawati’s late father, the former President Sukarno who was deposed by Suharto in the late 1960s. Sukarno died while he was under house arrest.
He revealed to his children that he had the accounts in Switzerland, IslamOnline was told.
It is believed that Megawati would want to have the money released in order to help the Indonesian economy to recover from its impediments. The PAN supporters believe Indonesia has a better chance to deal with the Switzerland bankers over the said “treasure” that is lying in their coffins.
Information given to IslamOnline suggests that a Swiss bank, due to certain unknown protracted reasons, would not release the money. Hopes were that if Megawati as President, she would be more convincing and would lead the bankers to release the “treasure” amassed by her late father.
Most of the money is believed to be from the Japanese army’s occupation of the Indonesian archipelago during World War II. Historians believe the Japanese hid most of their loot taken from Asian countries in Indonesia.
Sukarno led the Independence drive against the Red Army during late 1944 and managed to defeat them in several key battles. His forces might have captured some of the loot, which was sent to Switzerland in the aftermath of Independence war against the Dutch.
Some of the money is also suspected to come from drug and other illegal or contraband activities in which the Independence movement is said to have been involved in. These activities were to generate money in order to buy arms and support the revolt against both the Japanese and Dutch armies.
IslamOnline was told that the PAN did not intend to “use” Megawati, nor would want its political future to be stalked over the deal with the PDI-P. The PAN is said to have the support of several business leaders in Jakarta who are ready to bail the party in terms of funding for any future elections.
Rais, who is the Speaker of the People’s Council Assembly or Parliament, which is the body that votes the Indonesian President in office or disqualifies the President if it deemed the highest post in the country, was not well served.
Rais is said to have prepared Megawati for broader acceptance by Muslims in Indonesia. He was also instrumental in a failed attempt by Megawati in 1999 to win the Presidency from former President B.J. Habibie.
The PAN supported Wahid, as did other parties in the Assembly, but they voted Megawati as Vice President to calm her supporters who were violently demonstrating in the streets against her failure to be President.
Staunch Muslims in the country have accused Megawati of being anti-Islam. To correct this view, the Vice President recently started to give credit to Islam, showing that she accepted the fact that Islam was the majority faith in Indonesia.
In a press statement, Megawati urged the people of Indonesia not to interpret her decision to accept a takeover from Wahid as a no confidence vote against the embattled president.
Wahid has come under fire for not fixing the ailing economy or quelling sectarian and separatist violence.
A leadership change must be in accordance with the Constitution, she maintained. To observers in Jakarta this may mean a formal impeachment would be supported both by the PAN and the PDI-P.
It is not impossible that the Golkar party supports an impeachment move against Wahid even though its current Chairman, Akbar Tandjung, said he would stick to Wahid and would not want him removed from office until 2004.
The PAN and the PDI-P is said to have secured the support of other parties in the Parliament and it is believed that any move to impeach Wahid would be approved and his removal would be constitutional.
The Nladhatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim based organization in Indonesia is said to have mobilized thousands of its supporters other parts of Indonesia and is waiting for a go ahead from the President to come to Jakarta for a huge rally in support of Wahid.
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