Vaudine England, Jakarta – The conclusion from a day of rumours and threats was clear. There is nothing approaching a presidential crisis yet in Indonesia but the ground has been laid for continuing destabilisation by various groups with differing agendas.

It is precisely this plurality of goals that is working in President Abdurrahman Wahid's favour. The problem facing those who wish to depose him remains the basic disunity of the opposition, and the personality of Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Legislators from several political parties wish to use the untested parameters of parliamentary procedure to get rid of Mr Wahid on the grounds of his alleged corruption. They are disillusioned with his rule, but their underlying aim is to get their own patrons in power for reasons of greed.

For this group, the way ahead remains long and tortuous. There are divisions within the biggest bloc in the House of Representatives, the Indonesian Democratic party of Struggle led by Ms Megawati.

The swiftest scenario for dumping Mr Wahid would require a decision by the Parliament to censure him. That would put him on notice for three months, after which, if he had not responded to its concerns, a second memorandum would be issued. A month later, a special session of the full Peoples' Consultative Assembly (MPR) could be called. Mr Wahid, lacking the numbers to block any MPR action, could then be impeached.

A second opposition scenario involves digressions from the constitutional route outlined above, either through military intervention or the fomenting of an atmosphere of crisis. This could only work if the pace and violence of demonstrations picks up dramatically, if wider segments of society are galvanised to join in and if a leader appears with the credibility and the will to force the issue. Such a leader is lacking, which explains why so much attention is focused on the enigmatic Ms Megawati.

Would she go against everything she has said until now and turn on Mr Wahid to force his overthrow? Or could she be forced to step in to save the nation after enough chaos has been created? Few observers can foresee either happening.

A third layer of the plot involves the presidential palace itself. Some presidential advisers have raised the possibility that, if pushed, Mr Wahid could choose to freeze Parliament, in an echo of founding president Sukarno's action in 1959 when he aborted the country's last parliamentary democratic experiment and, with military backing, declared a new state of "guided democracy".

"If the President froze Parliament, it would be his political death," analyst Marcus Mietzner said. "The only answer to this ongoing instability is for the elite to get together ... to solve the basic problem, which is that the President thinks this is a presidential system and the Parliament thinks it's at least partly a parliamentary system."