Next Monday, President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia will be served with a second "memorandum' by his opponents in the parliament, laying out a series of charges about the near-blind head of state's period in office. Two financial scandals, which for many have come to epitomise the corruption and economic ineptitude of the 18month-old Wahid administration, will be the key here. Known as Bulog-gate and Brunei-gate, they involve the embezzlement of $4 million in funds from the state rice procurement agency (Bulog) by Mr Wahid's Chinese masseur, and the misuse of a further $2 million provided directly to Mr Wahid by the oil-rich Sultan of Brunei for a fund for the war-torn province of Aceh. According to Mr Wahid's opponents, both sums have simply disappeared.
Under the Indonesian constitution, serving such a second "memorandum" within a three-month period - the first was served in February - will lead almost inevitably to formal impeachment proceedings against the President.
The only way of averting this would be for Mr Wahid to accept parliamentary censure and agree to abide by the national assembly's rulings - something he has shown not the slightest inclination of doing so far.
Instead, he has been speaking the language of civil war, accusing his opponents of treachery and summoning his 30-millionstrong conservative Muslim Nahdlatul Ulama (Renaissance of the Ulama) organisation to stage a "national rebellion" by sending "suicide squads" to defend him in Jakarta.
With 30,000 such squad members already reportedly deployed in the capital and a further 50,000 training in remote villages under the aegis of the NU-inspired Defenders of the Truth Front, the stage seems set for a violent showdown.
Much depends on the attitude of the Indonesian army. The sole surviving element of former President Suharto's defunct "New Order" with the capacity to function at a national level, the army has successfully resisted Mr Wahid's attempts to place it under civilian control. In the outer island provinces where secessionist movements are active, in particular Aceh and West Papua (Irian Jaya), it continues to call the shots.
In both these areas, Mr Wahid's attempts at mediation have been increasingly ignored by local commanders. In Aceh, where negotiations with leadership of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) resulted in a brief nine-month "humanitarian pause" (June 2000 to February 2001), the army has now regained the initiative.
Control of security operations has been wrested back from the demoralised Indonesian police force and Mr Wahid was forced to issue a special presidential instruction giving the army a virtually free hand against the GAM.
The decision by the US oil giant, Exxon-Mobil, to order a temporary halt to its lucrative offshore gas operations in north Aceh had prompted army calls for the complete destruction of the well-armed secessionists.
Faced with massive revenue losses (Indonesia is the world's largest liquified natural gas exporter), the cash-strapped Wahid government had no alternative but to bow to army demands.
Much the same has happened in West Papua, where the President's statesman-like concessions on flying the much revered local Morning Star flag and the use of the name "West Papua" as opposed to the Indonesian-inspired Irian Jaya have been replaced by a much more hardline security approach.
The recent testimonies of the Swiss journalist, Oswald Iten, and the West Papuan human rights activist, Mr John Rumbiak, to public audiences in Dublin have described in graphic detail the consequences of the culture of impunity under which the Indonesian security forces now operate.
After an all too brief period following Suharto's fall in May 1998 when the Indonesian army came under unprecedented public scrutiny, the egregious excesses of the "New Order" era (1966-1998) are once again being tolerated in the interests of preserving a specious national unity.
Defending the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia has now become the rallying cry of conservative Indonesian politicians and military officers alike. Talk of a federal solution to the archipelago's multiple ethnic, religious and separatist problems is not heard in Jakarta these days.
INSTEAD a new orthodoxy prevails: preservation of the country's unity. Its most popular exponent is the politically inexperienced Megawati Sukarno putri. She is head of the country's most widely supported party, the PDI-P (Indonesian Democracy Party of Struggle), dubbed the Indonesian Democracy Party of Thugs by its opponents. Ms Megawati is now most likely to emerge as the principal beneficiary from any successful impeachment moves against the ailing Mr Wahid.
Despite her impeccable political ancestry - her father, Sukarno, Indonesia's first president (1945-1966), was the main architect of the country's unity following independence in 1945 - she is likely to be more beholden to the army than even Mr Wahid has become.
Amongst her closest advisers are figures like the sometime East Timor commander (19921994), Gen Theo Syafei, who infamously boasted that if the November 12th, 1991, Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor had taken place under his watch there would have been many more casualties.
The emergence of such a weak woman president backed by army hardliners could open the doors to yet another thinly disguised military regime. While it might be a relief for many in Indonesia to see the back of the increasingly unpredictable Mr Wahid, the prospect of the army regaining its former political power hardly bodes well for the country's democratic transition.
Dr Peter Carey teaches modern history at Trinity College, Oxford where he specialises in the modern history and politics of Indonesia. He is also a guest lecturer in the department of government and society at the University of Limerick.