He is also close to one of the candidates, Amien Rais, a Muslim leader.
One other nationally known figure has declared presidential ambitions: Amien Rais, former leader of the 28-million-strong, urban-based Muslim organization Muhammadiyah.
The three most prominent--Megawati, Gus Dur and Amien Rais--have yet to prove that they are capable of changing things for the better.
Leading politicians, such as Amien Rais, the speaker of the country's highest legislature, say its loss would be tantamount to the end of Indonesia as a nation.
Parliamentary heavyweights Amien Rais and Akbar Tandjung have rallied Muslim anger in the capital in a show of strength aimed at Wahid and his Vice President, Megawati Sukarnoputri.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Indonesia: A Wasteland Called Peace
These include Islamist groups, led by the United Development Party, as well as two strong parties with secular factions: Amien Rais's National Mandate Party and Abdurrahman Wahid's National Awakening Party.
It would include prominent opposition figures, among them Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid, the leaders of the two largest Muslim organisations, and Megawati Sukarnoputri, the popular daughter of Indonesia's first president.
Even Amien Rais, a rabble-rouser who will chair the August assembly and is one of the president's fiercest critics, appears to accept that, after this reshuffle, Mr Wahid should be given a further year.
Habibie one day, then the next with fellow Muslim oppositionist Amien Rais of the National Mandate Party (PAN in Indonesian) as well as Muslim-linked United Development Party (PPP) head Hamzah Haz, whose party is expected to ally with Habibie's ruling Golkar.
But the divisions between Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia's first leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of a large rural Muslim group and a champion of secular Islam, and Amien Rais, who is popular among urban Muslims and has recently been preaching a secular message of national unity, have long prevented them from pulling it off.
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