Word: jakarta
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...JAKARTA, Indonesia: Prices continue to rise. The rupiah continues to fall. Growing student protests and opposition calls for Indonesian president Suharto's ouster are reminding some Indonesia-watchers of the Philippines' "people's power" movement that brought down Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. But the problem with "people power" in Indonesia is that the people don't have much...
...Initial reports suggested that four students were killed and many more were injured when police fired into a crowd of 5,000 in Jakarta -- it was unclear whether they used sharp ammunition or plastic-coated bullets. Police also violently dispersed protesters in other cities. "The student protests are turning out to be much more durable than anyone expected," says Dowell. "There seems to be a web of resistance building up there which hasn't really existed before." Bad news for the aging Suharto, and, in the absence of an obvious successor, it may also bring Indonesia another year of living...
Suharto has been playing hardball with IMF chief Michel Camdessus for months over a $43 billion bailout agreement to restore confidence in his economy. Jakarta has repeatedly reneged on reforms, particularly those requiring the dismantling of lucrative monopolies controlled by Suharto's children and close friends. By telling the IMF that he wants aid on his terms and not theirs, Suharto has effectively bet Indonesia's entire economy, a wager so outlandish that foreign bankers in Jakarta have trouble concealing their admiration for his audacity even as they despair of his cavalier approach to balance-sheet realities. His brinkmanship...
Behind all the arguments about defaulting, restructuring and re-establishing capital, there is nearly universal puzzlement at what motivates Suharto to put his country, and himself, at such risk. Part of the answer can be found 275 miles east of Jakarta in the central Java village of Kemusu, where he was born. There, for centuries, peasants have done the bidding of the village chief in exchange for his protection, governed by a social code as intricate as the shared irrigation system. Deeply superstitious, the men of Kemusu have changed little in the half-century since Indonesia won its independence from...
...takes to solve Indonesia's economic crisis, but he refuses to acknowledge that his family, with its tentacles deep into the nation's business interests, is part of the problem. "None of the economists around him dare to tell him the truth," says Mochtar Buchori, a newspaper columnist in Jakarta. "None have the courage to tell him, 'No, you are wrong...