Indonesia is to hold general elections on June 7th next year and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) will select a new president 12 weeks later, on August 29th.
The announcement was made yesterday by the speaker of parliament, Mr Harmoko, after a meeting of legislators with President B.J. Habibie in Jakarta's parliament building.
It came against a background of continued street protests in the Indonesian capital, with thousands of students blocking a main thoroughfare yesterday afternoon to demand the arrest of former president Suharto on corruption charges.
While the elections may bring democracy for the first time to the world's fourth-largest electorate, the delay of seven months before Indonesians go to the polls leaves a dangerous political vacuum, with political and religious violence threatening to tear the country apart.
President Habibie said that time was necessary to prepare new laws for the first free elections since Indonesia was founded 53 years ago.
Mr Habibie, who took office when Gen Suharto was forced to step down in May, is weak and unpopular, and considered a transitional President with no power base. The students have demanded his resignation, alleging that hardline Suharto loyalists are manipulating events behind the scenes.
Mr Habibie has compromised on the date for selection of a president by abandoning his plan to delay it until December 1999.
The parliament promised to speed up an investigation by the attorney general into the Suharto family's wealth, but failed to set up a promised independent investigation. This will anger students who do not regard the current inquiry as credible. It has also not been made clear how the new assembly will be elected.
Estimates of the fortune Suharto accumulated during 32 years of autocratic rule vary from $40 million in cash to $40 billion in total assets. Half the 1,000 members of the current MPR were appointed by Gen Suharto and many of the remaining seats are filled by military officers.
Students demanding the arrest of the general and an end to the military's role in politics marched up Jalan Thamrin towards the presidential palace in Jakarta yesterday but troops blocked them at a fountain near the Merdeka (Freedom) Square. They dispersed peacefully.
Meanwhile, the UN investigator of violence against women, who is on a two-week trip to Indonesia, is in East Timor looking into violations including an alleged massacre of civilians last month, according to a report from Geneva.
Ms Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan jurist who serves as UN special rapporteur on violence against women, received government permission to visit East Timor and will look into reports of a massacre of civilians there.
A former governor of East Timor, Mr Mario Carascalao, said last month that more than 40 people were killed by Indonesian troops in a crackdown on separatist rebels. Indonesia has denied any mass killings and Red Cross and Catholic Church officials in East Timor have been unable to substantiate the reports.
In Jakarta, the UN rapporteur met the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Defence in an inquiry into riots last May, during which many ethnic Chinese were raped.