Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – The younger sister of Indonesian Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri lashed out at Parliament yesterday, accusing it of organising a virtual coup d'etat by attempting to impeach President Abdurrahman Wahid.
Speaking on the 100th birth anniversary of the country's founding President, Mr Sukarno, Ms Rachmawati Sukarnoputri also accused her sister of capitalising on their father's popularity to gain support for her Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P). Analysts said her attack on Ms Megawati and her party just as she seems poised to become President might have sprung from Ms Rachmawati's disappointment with the PDI-P's inability to live up to her father's nationalist ideals and its lack of concern for the welfare of ordinary Indonesians.
But her outspoken comments could also be a result of President Abdurrahman's desperate bid to cling on to power.
Analysts said he could be using Ms Megawati's family to ignite a debate over who is the real inheritor of Mr Sukarno's political legacy, and thus try to diminish Ms Megawati's popularity.
'Wahid courts many people, he tries to divide and rule,' said one analyst.
In her comments yesterday to graduates of Bung Karno University, Ms Rachmawati described attempts by legislators to impeach Mr Abdurrahman as a 'coup d'etat ... being conducted in the name of the Constitution and democracy'. She compared the move to the toppling of her own father in 1966, when he was forced to hand over power to General Suharto after a coup attempt in the country blamed on the communist party. She hinted that the same group that tried to topple her father was now trying to topple Mr Abdurrahman.
She accused the PDI-P of capitalising on Mr Sukarno's image without understanding his teachings. The PDI-P, which garnered most votes in the 1999 general election, used images of her enormously popular father on party posters and banners.
Mr Sukarno's other daughter, Ms Sukmawati Sukarnoputri, said in an interview that Ms Megawati could not be compared to their father, whom she described as 'really very special'.
She also said it would be better if Mr Abdurrahman remained as President while Ms Megawati kept her post as Vice-President.
'President Wahid still has the drive to remain as President. We don't find anything wrong with him or that he made a mistake in certain matters,' she said.
Much of Ms Megawati's popularity comes from public perception that she will live up to the ideals of her father – a point reinforced in a recent poll by the Tempo news magazine in which most respondents said Ms Megawati possessed the same leadership qualities as her father.
Analysts said that Mr Abdurrahman might be using Ms Megawati's sisters to portray the PDI-P as betraying the Sukarnoist ideology in order to split the party.
'Many Sukarnoists in the PDI-P don't agree with the special session,' said a PDI-P source, referring to the August session of the country's National Assembly (MPR), where Mr Abdurrahman faces impeachment proceedings. The President had threatened to boycott the session, but MPR chairman Amien Rais said yesterday that impeachment proceedings against him would go ahead on Aug 1 regardless of whether he attends the session.
Some observers said Ms Rachmawati might be moving closer to Mr Abdurrahman because she was pleased that he had supported moves to reinstate Mr Sukarno's name and revoke a 1967 decree blaming him for the communist coup attempt.