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10,000 join protest against Wahid
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THOUSANDS of stone-throwing protesters tried to storm the Indonesian parliament on Monday, demanding the resignation of President Wahid over corruption scandals.
Riot police fired teargas to push back student demonstrators as they tried to break down the iron gates to the parliament, where a closed session was hearing evidence linking Mr Wahid to two financial scandals.
“If he is found guilty of corruption, the students will ask for him to step down,” one student said. “Wahid must resign now,” another shouted as he unfurled the Indonesian flag.
The demonstration was the largest in Jakarta since Mr Wahid came to power 15 months ago as the country’s first democratically elected leader, but in the quiet of the presidential palace, he laughed off calls for his resignation, saying that he would not be hounded out by street protests.
“I will not resign because I was elected by the People’s Consultative Assembly,” he said, referring to the country’s highest legislature.\
Mr Wahid’s erratic style of leadership and failure to implement promised reforms had led to widespread disillusion with his government long before the present allegations of financial impropriety. Monday’s closed session heard the results of a parliamentary investigation into his involvement in two scandals that have come to be known as “Bulogate” and “Bruneigate”.
The first scandal centres on allegations that Mr Wahid’s masseur and former business partner used the President’s name to extract more than ￡2.7 million
from the state food agency, Bulog officials say that, months before, Mr Wahid asked if the money could be channelled into aid projects in Aceh, a province racked by separatist fighting. Mr Wahid admitted that he initially considered this, but decided instead to accept about ￡1.3 million from a neighbour to the north, the Sultan of Brunei.
The revelation led to the second scandal, when it was discovered that only part of the fund had ever been accounted for. Mr Wahid insists that the Sultan’s money was a personal gift to be disposed of as he saw fit. (SD-Agencies)
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