Indonesia's new president yesterday mapped out his vision for the troubled nation, promising to revive its economy and soothe communal tensions threatening to tear it apart.
Calling for a clean break with the Suharto era, Abdurrahman Wahid said most of Indonesia's problems were caused by the failure to narrow the wealth gap, defiance of the law and by too much control from Jakarta.
"Many of the problems of the past [were] ... because of mistakes in policy -- we didn't stress the need to increase incomes for the people," he said in his first major speech since winning the helm of the world's fourth most-populous country on Wednesday.
But he said he was forced to choose some of his new Cabinet, to be announced soon, from the discredited Cabinets of his predecessors B.J. Habibie and Suharto, because he had had to repay the political debts that secured his election by the nation's top legislature on Wednesday.
"To attain the presidency, I had to make compromises. And among the compromises, I have to take several people into the Cabinet who maybe were from the past Cabinet also," he said.
But he said they would have to "follow the current government's interest in honesty, in fairness and, more importantly, in our economic development."
Wahid, in an often humorous and self-deprecating 40-minute speech, said he wanted to give the provinces more power in a special federal system which would break from the tough central control imposed by Suharto.
Suharto was ousted in May 1998 and replaced by his prot?g? Habibie, who lost his bid for a second term last week.
Wahid said he would foster private enterprise and encourage foreign investment to help turn the economy around from its worst crisis in three decades.
"We are not able to make it on our own without capital from outside," he told a conference of diplomats, financial traders and academics.
Wahid promised to boost his rag-tag navy to protect marine resources, but at the same time pledged to continue pushing the military out of its traditional political role.
He was speaking at a luxury resort on the island of Bali, where two days of rioting greeted his surprise win over popular part-Balinese presidential rival Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose party won a separate parliamentary election in June.
The top legislature which appointed Wahid elected Megawati vice president on Thursday amid fears there would be an explosion of violence across the country if her frustrated supporters took to the streets.
Just a few kilometers from where Wahid spoke,the entrance to the exclusive tourist precinct of Nusa Dua bore the scars of the riots.
Traffic lights had been torn down and walls and storefronts destroyed.
Aides said Megawati declined Wahid's invitation to go to Bali to meet community leaders to appeal for calm because she was too busy receiving guests.
The president appealed for Indonesians to put aside their differences and said he and Megawati would personally take charge of bringing peace to troubled areas across the archipelago.
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