Marianne Kearney, Surabaya – Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P party is launching its own counter-offensive to staunch mass violence on the streets, and cleverly projecting the party as the one struggling to hold Indonesia together as President Abdurrahman Wahid again threatened "nationwide rebellion" if the parliament proceeds with impeachment attempts.

Their tactic: to re-establish thousands of the party's command posts throughout Indonesia which dotted street corners prior to the 1999 elections and acted as information centres for the newly empowered Indonesian electorate.

The command posts, or poskos, are a subtle reminder to Mr Abdurrahman's PKB party that the PDI-P too has support from the masses, without actually bringing its own supporters to the streets, said analysts.

The PDI-P claims to have re-opened at least 200 poskos in Jakarta alone. A few dozen PDI-P poskos have also begun operating in Surabaya, East Java, which is also Mr Abdurrahman's political base. In Bali, where the PDI-P won almost 80 per cent of the vote, dozens of bamboo huts are again being decorated with the red flags of Ms Megawati's party.

The re-opening of these poskos is also a way for the party to gain the moral upper hand over Mr Abdurrahman's backers. They allow the PDI-P to project itself as the party opposed to violence, which is trying to prevent Indonesia's dissolution.

Senior PDI-P figures confirmed that in contrast to Mr Abdurrahman's party and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) supporters, the PDI-P would not be mobilising its thousands of supporters or its paramilitary outfit, Satgas PDI-P.

As Mr Abdurrahman's threat to bring 400,000 supporters to the streets inflicts even more damage on the ailing economy, Ms Megawati's non-violence stance can only improve the party's image.

"It is a way of neutralising the situation. The poskos are a way of avoiding conflict among the people," said Mr Budi Hariyono, a PDI-P legislator from Surabaya, East Java. "For instance, people can become emotional if they are given the wrong information."

But more importantly, analysts said, the opening of poskos, particularly in East Java and Jakarta, may also be a way of splitting the ranks of some of Mr Abdurrahman's most ardent supporters who are also fans of Ms Megawati.

"They are like two feudal systems that can understand each other. NU is a religious feudal system, while the PDI-P is like a more secular feudal system," said an analyst.

Worshipping Mr Abdurrahman often went hand-in-hand with worshipping Ms Megawati in East Java, he said. He said that the 1999 elections showed she has a lot of support even in devout Muslim areas because her party, like NU, is seen as championing the needs of the poor.

Given such political sympathy for PDI-P, even among the ranks of Banser, the civilian militia organising the President's suicide squad, establishing locally run command posts by ordinary people often with close links to the NU may stop a lot of Mr Abdurrahman's fanatical supporters in their tracks.