That may be all it takes. The politics in Indonesia is very personal, and it seems increasingly likely that Wahid will be toppled not by a wave of popular discontent, but by a single, desperately shy, middle-aged housewife. The president is almost totally blind, and his once sharp intellect seems increasingly unfocused, possibly as a result of two strokes he suffered before taking office. He has been implicated in two financial scandals, although he vehemently denies any wrongdoing. His erratic behavior, his contradictory statements and his incompetence as an administrator have undermined his credibility as a leader. Yet his foes would have little chance of ousting him if they did not have the backing of Megawati, who controls the largest group of seats in Parliament–and more important, the hearts and minds of ordinary Indonesians.
The fact that she has sided with the anti-Wahid partisans has set up the country for a showdown. On April 30, Parliament censured the president for a second time for incompetence and violating the Constitution; Wahid has appointed a high-ranking team of cabinet members–dubbed the Magnificent Seven–to hammer out a deal with Megawati and thereby undercut the momentum to impeach him. Yet Wahid also says he refuses to relinquish any more power to his vice president, particularly the power to hire and fire ministers.
The drama has thus effectively narrowed to the mano a mano between these two–the father figure and the matron, the spiritual leader and the daughter of the country’s first president, Sukarno. Those who know Wahid say he will not budge further: “He would prefer to be kicked out of office than to surrender his presidential power,” says Juwono Sudarsono, Wahid’s former Defense minister. The outcome now depends on the character of the enigmatic Megawati.
The vice president knows she could topple Wahid any time she chooses, simply by quitting her post to lead the opposition. But any such sudden moves would risk a massive outbreak of street violence between her supporters and those loyal to Wahid. Close associates of Megawati say she remains haunted by the rivers of blood that were spilled in 1965, after her father was overthrown in a military coup led by Suharto, the Army general who would dominate the country for the next three decades. “It was a very tragic, traumatic time for her,” says Noviantika Nasution, a good friend and top official of her Indonesian Democratic Struggle Party (PDI-P). “She still has nightmares about it.”
It’s less obvious what her dreams are. She has refrained from calling publicly for Wahid to step down. But, says Arifin Panigoro, the PDI-P’s leader in Parliament, “it’s clear that [Megawati] wants the president removed. She says, ‘If [Wahid] resigns, I would thank him, but if not we can go to the special session’.” (If necessary, lawmakers can vote to call an emergency session of the 700-member People’s Consultative Assembly as early as July to begin impeachment proceedings and remove the president from office.) Megawati may well have lost the presidency after the November 1999 elections–even though her party won the most votes–because she assumed the post would be granted to her as much by birthright as by ballot. This time she has lowered herself a bit further into the fray, authorizing her party leaders to support the censure motions and making clear through aides that she, too, has lost faith in the president.
The strategy is classically Javanese–and reflects not caution but the depth of Megawati’s conviction that she is born to rule. Above all she does not want to be seen as grasping for power, both because she believes fiercely in adhering to constitutional procedures and because that would in fact reflect weakness. Instead she is quietly adopting an aura of leadership, extending what authority she has been given and waiting for more to flow to her. “She is more self-assured and self-confident, mentally and emotionally ready to take over,” says Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, who has watched her abilities develop as she has run the weekly meetings of the cabinet and the economic advisory council. “She is clearly aware of the strong possibility that she soon could be thrust into the presidency.”
That’s something Indonesia has expected for quite a while. Despite Sukarno’s egregious mismanagement of the country, millions of Indonesians regarded him as their champion. His daughter has inherited that mantle. Posters picturing Sukarno and Megawati grace the living-room walls in the homes of most poor people. After being ousted by Suharto from leadership of the Indonesian Democratic Party in 1996, Megawati became an icon of democracy as well, her familiar face spread across thousands of T shirts. Even when she disappointed many Indonesians by not joining the huge street protests demanding Suharto’s resignation in 1998, she remained popular as what she had always been–a symbol of resistance to injustice and brutality, and a vessel for the hopes of ordinary citizens.
To seize this moment, however, Megawati will have to be more. The coalition of forces maneuvering to push Wahid out the door cannot do so without her, but they will still demand a price. Her party members have already started to reach out to the small Muslim parties that blocked her presidential bid in 1999. And her influential husband, Taufik Kiemas, is working hard to strengthen his wife’s ties to the Islamic establishment. The son of a devout Muslim who supported Islamic parties, he can be found in a mosque almost every Friday, praying with high-profile Islamic leaders. His efforts have helped Megawati find common ground with such kingmakers as Amien Rais and Hamzah Haz, though she still does not entirely trust them. “He’s striking the deals, making the linkages and coalitions,” says Darusman. “He’s cementing things together.”
At the same time, aides say Megawati is determined to maintain good relations with Wahid’s National Awakening Party and his moderate Islamic cultural organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama. “She will want to maintain close relations with Wahid’s allies, who are the only Muslim groups she trusts,” says political analyst Jusuf Wanandi. Many analysts think her safest bet is to form a broad coalition between her PDI-P faction; Golkar, the second largest party, and perhaps Wahid’s and smaller Muslim parties, which would give her a healthy majority in Parliament.
More worrying are Megawati’s close relations with the Indonesian military. For all Wahid’s many faults, he dared to stand up to the generals, trying to impose civilian control and bring past human-rights offenders to justice. Many fear that Megawati, who shares the military’s outspoken nationalism, might let the Army revert to its old ways. “She knows they’ve had excesses and abuses, and she wants them to stop, but she’s not going to put them in a corner and shun them,” says a Western diplomat in Jakarta. Megawati has sent reassuring verbal messages to U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell that she won’t be a prisoner of the generals. But she’s made it equally clear that she will not make reforming the military a political priority. “She’s told Washington that military reform would be on Friday’s, not Monday’s, agenda,” says a Western political analyst in Jakarta.
She’s already received some backing from Indonesia’s generals, albeit unsolicited. As Wahid has admitted to NEWSWEEK, the military recently nixed any thought of imposing martial law. The decision almost certainly reflects the Army’s desire to stay clear of the political fracas. But given that Wahid’s supporters may well react badly to a Megawati presidency–and given ongoing instability in Aceh and Irian Jaya–the generals will clearly have a say in any Megawati administration. “She may be at the military’s mercy,” warns presidential spokesman Wimar Witoelar. “She will need their support to hang on if she takes over.”
Ironically, Megawati is said to detest political intrigue and backroom deals almost as much as she hates being in the spotlight. But in the hothouse of Jakarta, she has little choice: despite grand hopes for democracy after the fall of Suharto, Indonesian politics remains a predominantly elite affair. The fact that she can almost guarantee the ouster of a sitting president with successful horse-trading among parliamentary factions says much about how weak democratic institutions remain in Indonesia. The fact that all those factions have no choice but to rely upon her to take the throne says even more. “One of Suharto’s worst legacies is that he left no leaders standing to take over,” says Jusuf Wanandi. “Out of 220 million people we have only Mega.”
The question then becomes whether this erstwhile icon of democracy will usher in a more open, representative administration. Megawati’s manner is simple and unpretentious, even if her shyness sometimes makes her seem distant, even aloof. Unlike Wahid, say observers, the vice president doesn’t dictate to the people around her. Instead she listens, consults and brings people together. “At least she knows what she doesn’t know,” says a Western diplomat in Jakarta.
Her image as a placid housewife is not entirely false. To relax, friends say, Megawati puts on gloves, picks up pruning shears and a trowel, and works in the lush tropical garden surrounding her Mediterranean-style house in south Jakarta. Her greatest joy is to play with her four grandchildren. She shares their passion for cartoons and watches them on TV even when the kids are not around. Until she became vice president, she made sure to see every feature-length animated movie that came to town. (Her favorite was Walt Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”)
That simpleton facade does not play well with the Jakarta elite. But Megawati’s support among the masses is unquestioned–and critical for whoever would be Indonesia’s president. Hard times have aggravated the bloody ethnic and religious conflicts that continue to rage across the nation’s many islands. Official corruption is widely regarded as worse now than it was before the collapse of Suharto’s government in 1998. The economy, already a wreck, is continuing to deteriorate as the political standoff continues. The budget is ballooning toward more than 6 percent of GDP. For that reason and because of Wahid’s inattention to the job of financial reform, the International Monetary Fund has stopped payment on $400 million in scheduled loans. It will require courage to take some necessary steps, such as reducing the heavy fuel subsidies that are draining the budget. Optimists think Megawati is just the woman for the job. “You need a popular, credible, strong leader to deliver unpopular but necessary programs,” says economist Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
That’s one thing Wahid, despite his experience and stature, cannot offer–and something Megawati, despite her shallow record as a leader, can. The question is whether she can or will rise to the occasion. “She’s great at certain things–taking stock of a situation. She asks ministers the right questions,” Wahid says of his vice president. “But governing [requires] more than that. [It requires] judgment as to whether to act now or later.” The ailing president, and the country, may soon find out how good at governing Megawati really is.
