President Megawati Sukarnoputri was facing a growing political storm Thursday over a plan to drop corruption charges against ex-dictator Suharto, who has been hospitalized with a life-threatening bout of pneumonia.
Megawati has also been criticised for appointing her husband, Taufik Kiemas,
to lead a high-powered government delegation to China.
"His appointment as a state delegate amounts to nepotism," the Jakarta Post
newspaper said Thursday.
Arbi Sanit, a political lecturer at University of Indonesia, said Megawati had
abused her powers by sending her husband on this trip. "He is not a government
official, he should not be acting like one," he said.
The unusually sharp reactions to Megawati's latest moves mark the first time
members of her own ruling coalition have implied the president was involved in
"KKN," an Indonesian acronym for the endemic corruption, collusion and nepotism
that characterized Suharto's dictatorship.
Bureau Report
