Time is running out for Indonesia's first democratically chosen president. The task is vast. Last October Abdurrahman Wahid was given the presidency of one of the world's largest countries, spread across 17,000 islands and with numerous ethnic groups.
Run as a dictatorship for more than 30 years, Indonesia was rife with corruption, desperately short of honest judges and policemen, and full of groups with the money, the arms and the influence to cause trouble. On top of all that, the country's first democratically elected president inherited an economy crippled by a collapsing currency, collapsing banks and companies collapsing under their debts. Oh, and by the way, President Wahid is half-blind and was weakened by a near-fatal stroke two years ago.
All of which makes it scarcely surprising that Gus Dur, as President Wahid is affectionately known, is finding it hard to get his country moving firmly in a better direction. Separatist and inter-religious violence refuses to die down, especially in Aceh and the Moluccas, where this week a state of emergency had to be declared. Gus Dur has even let it be known that he blames some members of the "political elite" for inciting some of the violence.
Economic growth has begun to sputter back into life, but the improvement is too recent, fragile and small to have yet made much difference to the lives of ordinary Indonesians.
Corruption remains a festering sore. No senior people from the old dictatorial regime of President Suharto have yet been found guilty or even brought to court. This week bombs were found in the offices of the attorney-general, Marzuki Darusman, the man leading the anti-corruption investigations.
Gus Dur needs to be given time to get a grip on all this; a country in this sort of condition cannot be changed overnight. Yet the patience of other politicians, of the media, even of his own supporters is running out. Some of the explanation doubtless lies in unreasonable expectations of the magic that this saintly Muslim cleric could provide. Some lies in the ambitions of political rivals who would be happy to profit from his failure. Much, however, is his own fault. In recent months, he has done little to earn the patience even of his sympathisers, and much to infuriate them.
In the next few weeks, President Wahid will face a series of political tests. He has been called before parliament to explain his abrupt dismissal earlier this year of two economics ministers. And in August a meeting of the full parliament, designated as a constitutional assembly, will meet to hear his report on the state of the nation and to decide, as it is empowered to do, whether to allow him to continue as president. He will probably survive these tests, but on sufferance. He would greatly strengthen his position, both before and after the assembly meets, if he were to do two things.
The first sounds simple: reshuffle his cabinet, particularly the economic portfolios. The Jakarta rumour mill has it that this has already been made possible by a deal between the main power-brokers in the government – his vice-president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and Akbar Tandjung, who heads Golkar, part of the governing coalition. President Wahid has had to govern with a cabinet largely imposed on him by his coalition partners. Now, they want to give him a freer hand, which is welcome, though it comes with a sting: if he now fails, all the fault can be laid at his door. Even Amien Rais, a rabble-rouser who will chair the August assembly and is one of the president's fiercest critics, appears to accept that, after this reshuffle, Mr Wahid should be given a further year.
Gus Dur needs to exploit this opportunity. He is a famously wily, ambiguous character who likes to get his way by dividing, or baffling, his opponents. This has worked well in his efforts to gain control of the armed forces. But it is proving disastrous in economic matters. He has set up a series of councils of advisers to act as a parallel source of thinking to the ministries, but has left even the councils baffled as to who is in charge of what. The ministers are either inadequate, or undermined by the councils and the president, or both. A vigorous reshuffle, bringing in new economics ministers who are competent and who clearly have the president's backing, offers the only chance for a new start that could stabilise the currency, privatise the piles of nationalised assets, and clear a huge backlog of disputed corporate debts.
The second thing that Gus Dur must do concerns corruption. Even if the task of re-establishing the rule of law is vast, he must show businesses and the public at large that his government is moving decisively in the right direction.
One of the biggest obstacles to that is the perception – so far justified – that nothing much has changed from the bad old days of Suharto. The powerful still act with impunity and use bribes or muscles to get their way. President Wahid needs rapidly to show that this is going to change, by bringing one of the most notoriously corrupt to court, and thence to prison. Ex-President Suharto himself would be a fine place to start, but failing that one of his family would do.
In his wily way, President Wahid knows full well the power of a demonstrative act. He cannot fight every battle simultaneously. But he needs to make some impressive moves and achieve some more victories. Otherwise, in a year from now, Gus Dur will be out of office. And the alternatives are far from promising.