Jakarta – The key turning point yesterday for seasoned observers was not so much the applause President Abdurrahman Wahid received from legislators for his two apologies, but the interjections from the floor even before he spoke.

The People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) must be allowed to make recommendations after hearing the president's progress report, one legislator insisted.

No, one of the president's men, a legislator from the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), shouted back, alive to the dangers of allowing a largely hostile MPR to tell Gus Dur how to govern. The standing rules say we can only hear his report.

Okay, what about we discuss his report then, a third legislator offered as a compromise. Done, discuss it we will, said Speaker Amien Rais and banged his gavel to end the mini-debate.

What sort of a sleight of hand was the move? A working group had already decided, in spite of the PKB, that each of the 11 factions would do an evaluation.

Recommend, discuss, evaluate – the differences in nuances are small, but the end result is the same: When in session, the MPR is the highest body in the land and can choose to give the president a very hard time. "That was some clever orchestration," said a diplomat of the interjections."It made clear the relative weight of each party in the MPR."

Translation: Gus Dur's supporters have only 57, or 8.2 per cent, of the seats in the MPR. They will always be isolated if any motion comes to a vote unless they have a few of the bigger parties. With Gus Dur at the helm – for the last 10 months – the already baffling rules of the game could only become more so.

They are about to get cleared up as seasoned backroom operators show their mien: What parties like Golkar cannot get by way of popular support, they can obtain by fine-tuning the rules to cut down the president's executive powers in favour of the legislative branch. Impeachment is only the final, most extreme scenario.

It is a poker game played at many levels. At the most obvious is the legislative branch as the collective tool of several big parties chafing at being ridden roughshod over by a man who does not command formal majority support, who essentially rules at their pleasure but refuses to acknowledge he is beholden to them.

At the card-dealing level are party leaders and officials perhaps more interested in looking after their own interests than in breaking new ground in pushing parliamentary democracy to new levels.

They have delivered "extortionate demands" to the president in return for keeping their parties in line for the next 11 days, complained a Gus Dur aide. And some have not been coy in making clear they want control of profit-making state firms, either to keep them out of the hands of the PKB or to deliver them to their own parties.

As incumbent, and as Gus Dur the populist leader, Mr Abdurrahman has some aces. There is no alternative to him. So, while prepared to give the main parties some spoils of patronage in return for their giving him a stronger mandate to rule, complete with a majority sitting on the government benches in parliament, he reckons they are stuck with him.

If they do not give him another shot at ruling with a cabinet he can work with, rather than a compromise one he can blame for his ineffectiveness, do they dare risk a meltdown that could ultimately sweep all of them out of the people's house?

What is not so obvious is whether he realises the clock is ticking in either case. That if his new Cabinet cannot stay at least one step ahead of the public, then pressure will mount again. That not just the MPR, but the House of Representatives too, can take away his mandate.

And this time around, Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri just might step up as the leader of the largest party, with the Golkar stalwarts by her side.

If his performance yesterday is anything to go by, President Abdurrahman does at least appear to realise that antagonising the MPR could sound the death knell for his presidency. And that he does have some savvy political advisers in his two main speechwriters – Mines Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyuno and Regional Autonomy Minister Ryaas Rasyid.

But confusing the picture is a list of 20 cabinet openings being peddled to key party leaders by his intermediaries. Sources who have seen it say he has filled only nine of them, the other 11 open to negotiations. But not all the nine names appear to meet the criteria of professional expertise being promised.

And perhaps most telling, despite his attempt to capitalise on the recent show of unity between him and other party leaders, Ms Megawati again declined to read his speech for him, removing herself as his shield. The next 11 days promise to deliver much excitement. Will a blind man blink first? Or does he need to?