Robert Redford asked the same question that Erap should answer now

Looking at the swift and turbulent passage of events now taking place in Indonesia, I can only say that I admire President Abdurrahman Wahid for his courage in biting the bullet and risking a military backlash by declaring that former Armed Forces Chief, General Wiranto, must resign from his Cabinet.

Anyone familiar with the manner in which the ABRI, the once all-powerful military called the Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia, ruled that vast archipelago with an iron hand, backstopping the then believed "invincible" Bapak Suharto, can only be aghast at the possible consequences of a test of wills between the "new" civilian President Wahid and General Wiranto. That general, to nobody's surprise, has defied Gus Dur (as Wahid is popularly known) and refused to resign from his post as Minister for Security Affairs.

What will Wahid do now? Order General Wiranto's "arrest"? Can he move the military, until recently Wiranto's fiefdom, to enforce that command? The showdown has been postponed only by the fact that when Wahid issued that pronouncement he was in Davos, Switzerland, and has since been travelling in Europe.

The President, however, is due to return to Jakarta next Sunday, February 13. Between now and then, a watching Asia and "friends" around the world are waiting with some apprehension to see whether the armed forces, whipped into a frenzy by General Wiranto's loyalists, might mount a kudeta, as Indonesians -- long used to that exercise -- spell coup d'etat.

When Mr. Wahid, a much-loved but moderate Muslim leader, was elected President, succeeding the "transition" President B. J. Habibie, many "watchers" were surprised. For Wahid is almost clinically blind, and had barely survived a massive stroke and emergency surgery a year before.

Now we know why Wahid is respected. He may be blind of eye, but his strength of "vision" and his devotion to duty and the idea of democracy are not blurred. He has backbone. But will these qualities be enough?

It was equally an act of bravery when an Indonesian "human rights" panel -- tasked to investigate the ethnic massacres, murder, rapes, brutal acts of violence, arson, and virtual kidnapping of entire communities, in East Timor, after the United Nations registered an overwhelming vote for "independence" -- declared that Wiranto and five other Indonesian generals should be held responsible, along with the vicious military-sponsored pro-Jakarta "militia" gangs.

The atrocities targetted hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, mostly Catholics, and they included the murder of priests and nuns and the destruction of Catholic chapels and churches.

President Wahid said that Wiranto would be "tried," but, in typical Indonesian musjawarah fashion, asserted in the same breath that, if convicted, he would be immediately "pardoned." Wiranto has slapped even this conciliatory gesture away. To his credit, Wiranto had not attempted to seize power when he could, at the time that General Suharto was besieged by pro-demokrasi riots and rampaging students' and workers' mobs, and announced, "I quit," on May 21 1998, after 32 years in total control.

Perhaps Wiranto felt he could not muster enough support within his own ABRI, which was riven with several factions, and bedeviled by unrest in the oil-rich province of Aceh (which still wants to secede). In fact, Wiranto publicly supported the reform movement.

In the past few days, however, matters have come to a head. Will Wahid prevail -- or will a resentful military, circling the wagons, decide to make a renewed bid for power? Washington, DC and Western Europe are voicing strong "warnings" that an overthrow of Wahid and the democratically elected government would meet with a stern rebuff from their countries. Just as they failed to cow the Austrians, who stubbornly went on to forge a Far Right "coalition" government, prominently featuring a leading role for Jeorg Haider and his Freedom Party (he stands accused of neo-Nazi sympathies), the Western bloc may fail to impress the Indonesian armed forces, which see their once potent dwifungsi role belittled to next to nothing.

There's a word common to Indonesians, Malays and Filipinos, and it's amok. It means the same thing in our three language groups.

When this writer covered the GESTAPU coup in 1965 and the massive riots and massacres which accompanied it, almost half a million were killed in the eruption of blood-letting as mobs ran amok. I witnessed what the military and their "civilian" cohorts could do. The ABRI psy-warfare people are master puppeteers. The question is whether they are capable of once more writing a violent script for another wayang.

I pray not. For democracy is a fragile flower in an authoritarian land, with Islamic fundamentalism and ethnic hatred running as a strong undercurrent beneath the surface.

In fact, the clashes and murders -- in which Muslim rioteers have been killing Christians and ethnic Chinese in the Moluccas, including Ambon, and lately in Lombok -- may have been orchestrated, behind the scenes, by the military and other malcontents bent on destabilizing the Wahid regime.

We have to worry about what happens in neighboring Indonesia, right smack against our Mindanao "back door."

For the fate of more than 200 million Indonesians hangs in the balance.

The armed forces remain a powerful equation. They have 476,000 men on active service and reserves of 400,000 --numerically Southeast Asia's largest contingent under arms. Will they "unite" under Wiranto, though?

And, if there's turmoil, can we be swamped in turn with hundreds of thousands of Indon refugees pouring into Mindanao?

Obsessed as we may be with our "domestic wars", let's not turn a blind eye on what's occurring Down South.

It may be spurred by wishful thinking, but again it may be (okay, so they used to say that fruitlessly in Viet Nam during the lost war) a "light at the end of the tunnel." But it seems that, slowly, they're beginning to get their act together in Malacañang.

It's too early to say that a new resolve is starting to surface in a palace plagued with turf wars, but subtle changes are being put in place.

President Estrada's dilemma, come to think of it, is reminiscent of an almost-forgotten movie which was a box-office hit 28 years ago. It's uncannily current, on the other hand. This was The Candidate, starring a young and dynamic Robert Redford, which was directed by Michael Ritchie based on an Academy Award-winning "Best Original Screenplay" in 1972 by Jeremy Larner.

I recalled that "ancient" but riveting motion picture yesterday when I spotted the front cover of The Economist of London (February 5th-11th issue), featuring a smiling Senator John McCain with his thumbs up, under the headline: "THE CONTENDER: John McCain and the Race for the White House." The lead editorial of the influential newsweekly pointed out that McCain, who faced off against Texas Governor George W. Bush (with a plush Money Machine fueled by $70 million), crushed Bush in the first Republican Party "primary" in the state of New Hampshire by a stunning 18 percent.

McCain's victory, as the magazine's editors observed, came as "a deep shock to the Republican powers-that-be, who have staked everything on Mr. Bush." This does not mean, of course, that McCain has taken the lead. For a candidate campaigning on a shoestring, McCain has pulled a near-miracle out of his hat.

But, as they say, "one swallow does not make a summer." Bush is still ahead. McCain will have to struggle uphill all the way.

For one thing, McCain is the wrong kind of Republican -- he's shown himself as someone who "cares more for the average man than for the rich" (as the editorial writer said), and that will never do. That sort of platform worked for Erap. It may not do for McCain, because that's not what the Republican Party is all about.

In the old flick about The Candidate, Redford plays "Bill McKay," a young man pitted against a well-entrenched, several-times-reelected incumbent, for US Senator. In the beginning, McKay's backers submitted his name only so he could be a sacrificial candidate, just to demonstrate that there was "competition" for the Senate seat. The man who convinced him to run wrote, in a matchbox, what he expected young McKay to do. He scribbled: "You lose."

McKay, in puzzlement, inquired: "If I'm running to lose, what will entering this race accomplish for me?"

The cynical political "pro" retorted: "The campaign will at least give you a forum on which to air your views on everything under the sun -- including your pet peeve, the destruction by Big Business and Big Money of the environment and people's lives."

McKay (Redford) entered the campaign with a will, saying honestly what he felt. When, to everyone's amazement in his campaign team, he began picking up speed and closing the gap with the now-worried incumbent Senator in the poll surveys, his statements became more guarded, less outright, and more "packaged." For now the poisonous thought had intruded into the minds of his supporters: That he could win.

Even McKay's father, a retired ex-governor of the state who disagreed completely with the young fellow's views and had not given him a chance to succeed and had declined to endorse him, sat up and took notice -- and began openly backing his son (to McKay-Redford's embarrassment).

There were a number of setbacks, heartbreaks and frustrations. At one point, the McKay campaign bandwagon seemed to have been derailed. It was old "pro" dad, the ex-governor, who declared: "Don't worry. Bill will win."

"How?" the young crusader's despairing handlers asked.

The ex-governor chuckled and delivered the riposte of all time: "Because he's cute."

The climax of the movie comes when McKay decides that he's sold his soul to the devil of politics and resolves: "Whatever the cost, I'm going back to telling it like it is." Anyway, he repeats to himself, "I am going to lose."

His strongly-voiced and earnest opinions, though, catch fire. In a surge of support, the voters (many of whom, as in this country, the movie portrays, are mobilized to vote by hakot, or being bused or herded to the precincts, so what's new?) cast their ballots for McKay.

In the closing scene, as McKay-Redford's loyalists and supporters rejoice, with the victorious ballot-count pouring in, McKay shows panic, instead of elation. He's being swept to the US Senate by a landslide, er . . . "landscape." He drags his original "patron" into a bedroom and plaintively asks him: "NOW, what am I going to do?"

I suspect that "cute" Erap also asked that question of himself and his friends months ago. The motion picture closed before Redford could supply his own answer. On the other hand, the Erap "movie" goes on. It's open-ended. He's got to find the answer, and he won't find it in any script.

That's the difference between the movie World-of-Make-Believe -- where a scriptwriter and director can program a Happy Ending -- and the Stage of Life.