Indonesian Wahid Says he Underestimates His Opponents

Indonesian former President Abdurrahman Wahid said he had underestimated his opponents' determination to unseat him through the special session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).

"I was wrong in my estimates of the politicians' backbone," Wahid said in an interview with Associated Press Television News on Wednesday.

The MPR on Monday ended a year-long impasse between the legislative and executive branches by unanimously voting to oust Wahid and elect his deputy Megawati Soekarnoputri as the country's new president.

Wahid has rejected the result saying the MPR did not have the constitutional right to remove him.

In his first interview since his ouster as president, Wahid predicted a return to military-backed authoritarian rule under Megawati.

Wahid was removed by the MPR after the Indonesian Military (TNI) ignored his declaration of a state of emergency and refused to obey his order to dissolve the MPR and the House of Representatives.

But he defended his decision to invoke the emergency rule.

"We have to fight for democracy, we have to defend democracy," he was quoted by the Jakarta Post.com online news service as saying.

Wahid said his opponents in the legislature and the TNI wanted to return to the ways of former President Soeharto who ruled the country for 32 years and was ousted in 1998 amid protests and riots.

"They used the quarrel between the politicians to set up their own rule, which I think will slide little by little to the old ways," Wahid said of the military commanders who were in a state of near-mutiny in the final months of his administration.

He, however, did not condemn the military as a whole, adding that only a few generals supported a return to authoritarianism.

Wahid said he would have nothing to do with the new administration.

"I will not issue any advice to Megawati. The ouster is illegal and I will have nothing to do with it," he said, adding that his long friendship with Megawati was over.

"She doesn't put the interests of the nation and the country above her own," he said.

The two were close political allies in their resistance to Soeharto's rule, and Wahid's backing enabled her to become vice president in 1999.

Wahid confirmed he would leave the presidential palace on Thursday and travel to the United States for medical treatment, saying he had fluctuating blood pressure.






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