Wahid dug his own grave. He never took the legislators’ outrage over his erratic leadership very seriously. In fact, he largely ignored the Parliament, arguing that in Indonesia’s presidential system it didn’t have the legal right to bring impeachment proceedings against him. When the 60-year-old president fought back, it was with threats to dissolve Parliament or impose a state of emergency. “He began acting like a tinhorn dictator,” says another Western diplomat in Jakarta. “No one wanted to see him bring the whole country down with him.” Last week, in a curious cabinet reshuffle, Wahid fired two of his smartest cabinet members, Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Attorney General Marzuki Darusman.
Popular Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri is preparing to take Wahid’s job. She rejected a last-ditch power-sharing offer from the president and told her party, the Indonesian Democratic Struggle Party (PDI-P), to vote for the special MPR session. At the MPR meeting, Wahid will be required to give an accountability address, defending his less-than-two-year-old presidency. If, as expected, a majority of the 700 MPR members, including the 500 M.P.s, vote to reject the president’s defense, then he will be automatically removed from office and Megawati will become president until the next election in 2004.
That may not bring stability to Indonesia. Megawati is worshiped by the masses, who recall the populist rule of her father, Sukarno, independent Indonesia’s first president. But also like her secular father, she is regarded with suspicion by radical Muslims. Groups like Defenders of the Islamic Front (FPI) demand that Indonesia’s longstanding doctrine of a multireligious society be scrapped in favor of Islamic law. Over the past year, young men wearing white robes and armed with sticks and machetes have been attacking popular Jakarta nightclubs and bars. They tear down Britney Spears photos and smash Budweiser signs as affronts to Islam. They confiscate beer out of warehouses and set fire to local brothels. Indonesian authorities often do little to stop them, lest they be considered anti-Islam.
Many Indonesians view the hard-line Muslim groups as thugs. The FPI claims that its vigilante raids are misunderstood. “We don’t want to hurt non-Muslims, we just want to uphold morality,” says Siroj Alwi, a spokesman for the group. “Before we smash up these places, we send them a letter warning them to shut down.” To get a firsthand look at the FPI, NEWSWEEK’s Joe Cochrane went along on a recent “religious raid.” His report:
I show up at the FPI headquarters one night as the radicals prepare to visit what a group spokesman calls an “evil” north Jakarta bar. I stand in awe as hundreds of men age 15 to 70 pour into the tiny lower-class neighborhood. I lost count at 800 members. “There is much evil out there,” says one member in English as he hands out bamboo sticks. “Tonight we are going to destroy it.” As if on cue, two dozen trucks show up and the FPI raiders run out into the street and hop aboard. The formidable convoy rolls out into the Jakarta night. At the first police post we pass, the officers quickly look the other way–pretending they can’t see 800 armed men in white robes driving by in trucks. The police are widely accused of taking bribes from brothels, gambling dens and drug peddlers.
We approach a popular Western-style discotheque in central Jakarta, known for prostitution and drugs. Security guards and bar girls start running in terror when they notice the FPI vigilantes, who had raided the club twice before. To their obvious relief, we drive on.
A few minutes later the trucks stop at a private nightclub connected to the Hotel Olympic, in north Jakarta’s Kota district. The FPI members dismount and run screaming down a narrow street, wielding their sticks. Small groups break off with military precision to block approaching police, while the bulk of the mob charges toward the club’s entrance. It’s locked. The owners have installed steel anti-riot doors. The FPI is not discouraged. To screams of “Allah akbar” (“God is great”), the raiders smash windows and strike the doors with crowbars and hammers. Hotel security guards look on in horror at the attack, which goes on for 30 minutes. Suddenly, a squad of riot police pulls up and fires three rounds of tear gas into the crowd. The FPI raiders merely break out toothpaste and apply it to their eyes to lessen the sting. They’ve been through this routine before. Amazingly, they then chase the police away and continue the siege. But there is no getting through the steel doors.
Then somebody gets an idea. A large truck is backed up to the entrance and steel chains are hooked to the doors. The truck lurches forward, and both doors are ripped off their hinges. Dozens of raiders storm inside. Then come screams and the sound of smashed glass. “Evil man!” one leader yells at the nightclub’s owner, who is dragged out of his bar and slapped around by the mob. I worry that they are going to beat him to death or set him on fire. Fortunately, he’s subjected only to hearing verses from the Quran screamed into his ears. He’s let go.
The raiders, who had become my personal bodyguards, then escort me into the nightclub to see their handiwork. It’s a mess: smashed walls and lamps, overturned tables, the remnants of a beer tap. Several young bar girls scurry out in tears. I privately hope the owners have property insurance. Alwi, the FPI spokesman, finds me surveying the damage. “They had drugs, gambling and women in here,” he says solemnly. “If the police are not willing to stop these people, then we have to.”
I decide not to tell Alwi that his organization is widely viewed as goons for hire–not religious crusaders. Military figures and private nightclub owners are said to use religious groups to extort and intimidate their competitors. Most FPI members are regular Muslims and law-abiding citizens. Most join because it gives them a sense of empowerment they can’t find elsewhere in their lives. That in itself is not such a bad thing. But they are clearly being used by political and military officials with their own agendas.
By 2 a.m., the FPI attack is over. The raiders head back to the trucks, sharing stories and clearly satisfied with the night’s violent adventure. The police are nowhere in sight. I hail a cab, thinking that the spectacle I just witnessed is a sad way to settle disputes, or to “enforce morality.” But in an increasingly lawless country, I opted not to make that point aloud.
