Wahid must attend special session: Speaker

By Amit Baruah

SINGAPORE, JUNE 8.The Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker, Mr. Amien Rais, said today that the President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, could not escape a special session of the Upper House scheduled to take place on August 1.

The agenda for the special session appears pretty clear - the impeachment of the President himself on grounds of ``incompetence''. The President, who in the past has said he will not deliver any address to the MPR, today put certain conditions to attend the special session - the central condition being that the performance of his Government would not be questioned by the Upper House.

Clearly, the MPR is in no position to accept such an impossible condition given the fact that its principal objective is to call Mr. Wahid to account for what they think is his inability to govern. In a separate development, the Vice- President, Ms. Megawati Sukarnoputri, has said that she expects the political crisis in the country to be over by mid-August (by the time the MPR completes its deliberations).

During a meeting with young Indonesian entrepreneurs, Ms. Megawati did not give details of how she saw coming events in the country, but said that the country's problems would be resolved by independence day on August 17. The Vice-President also said she was confident that the security situation in the country would hold till the MPR met. She brushed aside fears of politically-inspired clashes in the run-up to the MPR deliberations.

Mr. Megawati, who has begun to distance herself from the Wahid Government, did not attend a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. Similarly, she had boycotted the swearing-in of new Ministers last week at the Presidential palace. Mr. Wahid dismissed Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as Security Minister and Mr. Marzuki Darusman as Attorney-General after the former publicly differed with the President's proposal to declare a state of emergency in the country.

Mr. Bambang, meanwhile, has said that the MPR session should resolve the impasse in the country. ``The upcoming special session must be able to produce a comprehensive solution for the sake of the nation and the State. We must first salvage the State above all other things. We will have a new and effective leader and Government,'' the former Minister stated. He admitted that the Wahid Government had failed to deliver on its promises. ``Not only has it been wasteful, we've also failed to do anything significant for the people.''

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Section  : International
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