The same day, troops broke up a demonstration of 6,000 Wahid supporters outside the gates of the legislature. Around 1,000 protesters who managed to break through a security fence were stopped by four lines of soldiers backed by armoured vehicles and tanks. Hundreds of paratroopers and police also cracked down on protesters in the town of Pasuruan, in Wahid’s home province of East Java, fatally shooting one protester.

Wahid has served as president for 18 months. He was appointed as the head of a "National Unity Cabinet" following the 1999 election in which the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, received the highest vote. The election was the first held since the resignation of the dictator Suharto in May 1998. Megawati is almost certain to succeed Wahid if he is forced to step aside.

Representatives of seven of the 10 parliamentary factions supported the May 30 motion. Prominent among them was Golkar, which under Suharto functioned as the permanent ruling party and enjoyed close links with the military and state apparatus. Its leaders are today trying to appeal to working people who bear the burden of the ongoing economic crisis. "The people’s lives are worsening, the market and donor institutions have lost confidence, the rupiah is losing its value, unemployment is increasing, and prices are going up," said the party’s spokesperson Evita Asmalda during the parliamentary debate.

Wahid has "no intention of quitting" said Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab after the humiliating vote was cast. However, each step the besieged and ailing president has taken in the last month has served to rally more political figures to the opposition’s cause, and to expose his isolation. When he ordered Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to take "stern measures" to enforce law and order two days before the parliamentary vote, the minister demonstratively sought Megawati’s advice. An earlier threat to declare a state of emergency received a quick rebuff from the army’s high command.  
 
‘National disintegration’
Wahid lost more support in late May when, according to the Reuters agency, he claimed that "supporters in the rebellious province of Aceh and his own political heartland of East Java had both asked him to become president, suggesting they would break away from Indonesia" if the impeachment motion proceeded.

"He said there will be national disintegration if he is ousted. This is not what a president should do. He should protect the citizens and not encourage separatism," said PDI-P spokesperson, Sophan Sophian.

But it is not the statements of the country’s president that are the source of independence struggles. Since the weakening of Suharto’s iron grip over Indonesia, whose 220 million people live on a patchwork of many islands and speak a number of different languages, Jakarta has been unable to keep the lid on movements in East Timor, West Papua, and Aceh. Conflicts between indigenous peoples and settler populations have frequently wracked the Maluku Islands and Kalimantan.

Megawati "is known to the rest of the world as a fervent nationalist opposed to increased autonomy for the restive provinces," wrote the editorial writers of Australia’s Melbourne Age on May 22. The big-business paper claimed that Megawati "is also closer to the military than Mr Wahid." The army’s 38 members of parliament abstained in the May 30 vote.

At least some mouthpieces for the capitalist class hope that Megawati will be able to get away with economic "reforms" dictated by the imperialist powers through the International Monetary Fund. "You need a popular, credible, strong leader to deliver unpopular but necessary programmes," Indonesian economist Sri Mulyani Indrawati told Newsweek in early June.

A special session of the People’s Consultative Assembly, which comprises the members of parliament and 200 appointed legislators, will convene on August 1 to hear the case for impeachment. "Although some lawmakers are eager to accelerate the process," wrote Reuters correspondent Mark Landler on May 31, "nobody is advocating that Indonesia follow the recent example of the Philippines"--a reference to the street mobilizations that opponents of President Joseph Estrada organized to force him out of office in January.

"The stately pace of the impeachment process has robbed the scene of much of its drama, which may not be bad in view of the unrest that bubbles just under the surface," wrote Landler.

This unrest finds sharp expression, not just in the generalized social tensions in many parts of the country, but in the numerous strikes and protests organized by workers in the telecommunications, banking, textile, hotel, auto, and other sectors.

Thousands of workers marked May Day this year by staging "rallies in major cities across the country," according to the Jakarta Post. "Participants were unified in demanding that May Day be declared an official holiday, that workers be given greater freedom to organize, and that authorities put an end to arbitrary dismissals," reported the paper.

In Jakarta, Muchtar Pakpahan, the chairman of the Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union, "called on the government to raise the minimum wage 100 percent, [and] also demanded the government eliminate working contract systems used by employers and establish an official eight-hour workday." The minimum wage in Jakarta stands at US$35.50 a month.

Two weeks later, the Post reported that threats of "massive labor rallies" forced the Minister of Manpower and Transmigration, Al-Hilal Hamdi, to "delay for 14 days the implementation of a ministerial decree annulling severance pay and service fees to retired or dismissed workers." The decision was reached "after the first of what labor unions had promised to be a string of labor rallies and strikes. About 3,000 demonstrators from the All-Indonesia Workers Union Federation started camping in front of the minister’s office in the morning."

In another sign of the ferment among workers, government attempts to silence union activists by threatening them with prosecution and jail was dealt a blow with the release after one month’s imprisonment of Ngadinah, a leader of the union at shoe manufacturer PT Panarub.

Ngadinah was arrested on a complaint by a company executive that she had "masterminded" strikes by 8,000 workers at the plant in Tangerang, near Jakarta, in September of last year. The arrest sparked protests by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and others. The government agreed to her release on May 22.

"The government’s failure to ensure the rights of laborers to live a proper life is a form of crime against humanity," Ngadinah told the Jakarta Post. "PT Panarub may think that by sending me to court, other workers will no longer dare to struggle for their rights," she said. "My struggle for laborers’ rights is not only for myself or Panarub workers, but is more to arouse moral indignation among workers all over the country to wake up and fight suppression against laborers."  
 
 
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