But the Christians were usually SLA officers and they are a distinct minority in southern Lebanon, where there has been no general Lebanese army deployment since the Israelis left.It was the Greek Catholic Bishop of Marjayoun, Monsignor Antoine Hayek, who put their views with most eloquence. "What is the Lebanese state doing?" he asked after Sami Zaybaq's house was burnt. "Why is it powerless to stop this private 'justice' against people who have already purged their crimes in prison? These acts risk turning southern Lebanon back to fire and blood in the coming days ..."Which was why those soldiers were checking cars high above the plain of Galilee yesterday afternoon.. Armed supporters of the Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid, massed in Jakarta, before a parliamentary vote that will almost certainly lead to his impeachment.
Armed supporters of the Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid, massed in Jakarta yesterday, before a parliamentary vote that will almost certainly lead to his impeachment. In East Java, where backing for the President is most intense, police fired rubber bullets after 5,000 of his followers burnt two churches. In Jakarta, officers confiscated sickles, machetes and bamboo spears from thousands of Wahid supporters arriving in the capital.Some 3,000 people demonstrated noisily but peacefully in support of the President in Jakarta, but the real test will come with today's parliamentary meeting of MPs, which is expected to call a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly. The MPR, as it is known, is the supreme legislative body, with the power to dismiss, and elect, the President.The demonstrators danced and sang in front of Jakarta's Supreme Court, and burnt flags of one of the opposition parties threatening to impeach Mr Wahid. Jakarta's chief of police, Inspector General Sofyan Jacob, told The Jakarta Post: "If they try to provoke mass unrest, we'll beat them up." Ominously, the Jakarta police, never the world's most disciplined force, have been issued with live ammunition.The parliamentary vote is the third stage in a complicated four-part impeachment process. In February, MPs filed the first motion of censure against the President; as required under the constitution, a second motion was passed last month.
If, as seems inevitable, today's vote goes against Mr Wahid, the MPR will make a final decision on his impeachment.Despite being elected in 1999 in an atmosphere of optimism, Mr Wahid has lost the support of all but his minority party. Even the party of his popular female Vice-President, Mega-wati Sukarnoputri, is calling for his impeachment, although she has not openly criticised him.Political tension and uncertainty have reached new heights in an extraordinary sequence of events in the past few days. In an interview yesterday in the leading newspaper Kompas, Indonesia's chief security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said Mr Wahid had attempted to impose a state of emergency, but military chiefs had refused to implement it.Such a decree would have allowed him to dissolve parliament and call elections, scuppering the attempts to impeach him. "The President was convinced it was the only way to rescue this nation from constitutional abuse by the legislative members, which threatens democratic life," said Mr Yudhoyono, a former general and the cabinet's most powerful member.
