Rais's broadsides also remind Wahid that the MPR boss is very much a player.
On Oct. 14, Habibie gave his accountability speech to the MPR to defend his record as president.
In Suharto's day, the MPR comprised a bloated 1, 000 members, half of whom were appointed by the president.
Most of the remainder of the 700-member electoral college is Parliament, which will now make up more than two-thirds of the MPR.
On Oct. 1, delegates to the MPR, which comprises elected MPs and appointed provincial and sectoral representatives, are to be sworn in.
Ask the Habibie government, the military or the MPR, and they will say they are securing reform, even accommodating students and opposition leaders.
At MPR headquarters--known as the "Klingdom"--the man who took Lake Wobegon's cracker-barrel lore to a waiting nation shakes his head at such talk.
His National Awakening Party (PKB) came third in the June polls (13%) and sits fourth in terms of actual number of MPR seats (57).
The tussle between Wahid and Rais had begun in mid-April, when the latter suggested a special MPR session to demand an accounting from the president.
Last year, through MPR's newly renamed parent, American Public Media Group, he took control of KPCC, a struggling Los Angeles-area station owned by Pasadena City College.
Indonesia's 1945 Constitution requires the formation of an electoral college, called the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR by its Indonesian initials), to select the nation's top two political leaders.
After all, the PDI-P had a clear mandate: It had won the largest share of the vote in June's parliamentary elections (34%) and had the most seats in the MPR (185 - 153 seats in parliament or the DPR, plus 32 regional representatives).
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