Word: jakarta
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When the scorpion tanks clattered to a halt outside the Istana Merdeka palace in Jakarta, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid was at first relieved. "Maybe they're here to protect the palace," he said to his daughter. But when she pointed out that the tanks had swiveled their guns toward his balcony, Wahid knew that he had lost a game of brinkmanship. The security forces had switched loyalties to his Vice President, Megawati Sukarnoputri...
...religious feuds have revived across the archipelago of 13,000 islands; 3,500 died in the violence last year. Unemployment is estimated at 40%, while corruption and economic bungling have kept foreign investment at "sub-zero," as a diplomat puts it. Most worrying of all, many observers in Jakarta doubt that Megawati, who owes her ascension to the army, has the will or smarts to make the hard decisions now needed...
...declare a state of emergency and dissolve parliament, Megawati went to the movies to see Shrek with her grandchildren. On her second day in office, when she might have been lobbying the national assembly for her pick for Vice President, she attended a fashion show at a posh Jakarta hotel...
...burned villages and kidnapped suspected collaborators of the Free Aceh Movement. Often these missing Acehnese turn up on the side of the road, shot to death after being tortured. "The military is using brute force to eliminate everything in its path--including civilians," says a Western diplomat in Jakarta. For all Wahid's flaws, he tried to improve the military's record on human rights; activists doubt that Megawati, in debt to the armed forces, will do the same...
...Still, Megawati's presidency is a product of that very backroom intrigue she shuns. Her family may have been ousted from power by Suharto, but it remained part of Jakarta's fractious political and economic elite. The very same coalition of forces that united to keep her out of the top job after the 1999 election have now united to elevate her. Little is known of her political thinking beyond a broad echo of her father's nationalism. It's a nationalism strongly supported by the military, a nationalism that doesn't easily tolerate federalism or secession, which suggests...