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Indonesian Students Stage Anti-Wahid Protests
JAKARTA, Jan 26 (News Agencies) - Students protested in at least two Indonesian cities on Friday demanding that President Abdurrahman Wahid step down, as parliament set a date next week to announce their verdict on his alleged role in two financial scandals.
Some 500 students rallied outside the parliament building in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province, waving posters denouncing the country's first democratically elected leader.
"There's no more reason to retain [Wahid]," said Muhammad Rizki, chairman of the Andalas University students union.
In Jakarta, 100 leaders of student unions from seven state universities in Java and Sumatra submitted a petition to parliament calling on the legislature to press on with its probe into the twin scandals in which Wahid is allegedly involved.
MPs on the commission investigating the two scandals - dubbed Bulogate and Bruneigate by the press - said they would present their findings on Monday to a plenary session.
The house would publicly announce its verdict, and its course of action on Thursday, February 1, they said.
House speaker Akbar Tanjung said the decision on whether to call a special national assembly session to impeach Wahid would depend on the result of the commission's investigation.
"It [the impeachment proceeding] depends on the result of the January 29th (plenary session)," Tanjung said.
However Tanjung stressed, without elaborating, that Wahid's case is different from that of disgraced former Philippine president Joseph Estrada, who was ousted by popular protests earlier this month.
"It's far different, qualitatively and quantitatively," he said, in comment many took as hinting that the 500-member house would stop short of an impeachment hearing.
Later Friday, some 200 students and workers protested at the parliament building, also calling for Wahid's resignation.
A parliamentary commission wants to question Wahid over Bulogate - the theft of $3.9 million from the state logistics agency, Bulog, reportedly pulled off by Wahid's masseur, Alip Agung Suwondo.
The other scandal, Bruneigate, centers around a $2 million donation from the Sultan of Brunei that the president claimed was a personal gift to be used for humanitarian assistance in the troubled Aceh province.
Wahid has criticized the special commission as illegal and refused to be queried over the scandals. He claimed he was not accountable to a lower house body.
The president's opponents have staged daily protests at the parliament building in the past week, and his supporters have also been active.
On Friday some 20 Wahid supporters - who have threatened to descend on Jakarta en masse to defend him - were meeting with parliamentary leaders inside the parliament complex.
On Wednesday, leaders of the 40-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's largest Islamic group once led by Wahid, warned Tanjung of bloodshed if Wahid was toppled.
"We cannot accept the way legislators are criticizing the president and the political conspiracy in the House to topple the government," the Jakarta Post quoted one of NU leaders, Akiq Zaman as saying after meeting Tanjung.
"The nation will be facing a chaotic situation and pay a high social cost if the president is forced to step down now while the constitution guarantees his tenure until 2004," he added.
He said that NU leaders could no longer hold back Wahid's supporters in East Java, an NU stronghold, from traveling to the capital to counter anti-Wahid protests.
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