Thus the trio of Megawati, Rais and Gus Dur may well decide the next president.
He is also close to one of the candidates, Amien Rais, a Muslim leader.
Rais's broadsides also remind Wahid that the MPR boss is very much a player.
Mr Rais has been most conspicuous and outspoken and makes no bones about his presidential ambitions.
Logar deputy police chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said the helicopter is owned by a company named Khaorasan.
"We might see some of the Council's proposal intact in the proposed legislation, " Rais told the Bar Council workshop.
"Those were positions very much craved by political parties, " says Faisal Basri, secretary general of Rais's National Mandate Party.
That explosion wounded three police officers but no one was killed, said Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai.
"It will be hard work for Tengku Razaleigh, but he can deliver the goods, " says Razaleigh associate Rais Yatim.
One other nationally known figure has declared presidential ambitions: Amien Rais, former leader of the 28-million-strong, urban-based Muslim organization Muhammadiyah.
Despite his decisive role in getting Wahid elected over Megawati, Rais has not shied away from public criticism of the president.
The three most prominent--Megawati, Gus Dur and Amien Rais--have yet to prove that they are capable of changing things for the better.
When Mr Suharto fell in 1998, Mr Wahid and Mr Rais were the two groups' respective leaders in the struggle for democracy.
The episode underlines how dependent Indonesia's stability is on cordial relations among its main leaders: Wahid, Rais and Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
In 1440, Gilles de Rais, French marshal who fought for Joan of Arc, was hanged for Satanism and the murder of 140 children.
Still, after a year of benefiting indirectly from Indonesia's tangle of problems, Miss Megawati, Mr Rais and Mr Wahid could yet inherit them.
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.
That leaves Rais's post largely ceremonial the rest of the year.
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.
While the reserved Megawati has found her spare-wheel role as vice president to her liking, Rais is still struggling to find his place in the public eye.
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
Still later, with the competition between nationalist forces, represented by Megawati, and Rais's political Islam becoming more pronounced in the legislature, Wahid positioned himself as the middle ground.
But Wahid often turns Rais's statements to his own advantage.
After Rais's January rally, Wahid's insinuation that some parties were out to undermine his government prompted declarations of support from Tanjung's Golkar and Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
But Mr Rais's and Mr Wahid's parties have rifts of their own: the chairman of Mr Wahid's party is backing Miss Megawati, even as the other parties back Mr Wahid.
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.
To give himself a real shot at becoming Indonesia's next president, Rais needs to increase the disappointing 7.4% of the popular vote that his National Mandate Party won in the parliamentary elections last June.
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.
In the run-up to the October presidential election, Wahid, then head of the Nahdlatul Ulama mass Muslim organization (which claims 30 million members), visited Rais at the latter's office at Muhammadiyah (another mass Muslim group).
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