President Suharto's modest bungalow in Jalan Cendana, a leafy Jakarta street, was the centre of action in the hours before the 76-year-old leader of Indonesia announced yesterday that he would transfer power to a successor. Presidential bodyguards in batik shirts ushered in and out the country's top officials.
The armed forces chief, General Wiranto, arrived in a limousine emblazoned with four stars on Monday evening and stayed for 30 minutes. General Suharto's sonin-law, Lieut-Gen Prabowo who commands KOSTRAD, the army's pro-Suharto strategic reserve, arrived separately. But they left together.
The two officers represent the opposing faces of the Indonesian army: the former the friend of the students, the latter the tough presidential loyalist.
In Indonesia the generals play a key role in politics - they brought Gen Suharto to power in 1966. But the armed forces are few in number compared with population size. The military has 284,000 personnel, plus 177,000 police and another 20,000 men in KOSTRAD, with responsibility for maintaining the cohesion of an archipelago as wide as the United States containing 200 million people.
Its equipment includes 273 AMX-13 tanks, 50 Scorpion light tanks, 69 Saladins, 55 Saracen armoured cars, 55 Ferrets and 200 other armoured personnel carriers (APCs).
During last week's mass disturbances, much of this hardware and about 35,000 troops were reported to be massed in the capital, one eighth of the total complement of the armed forces, including KOSTRAD soldiers.
After the meeting on Monday Gen Wiranto announced that any change in the leadership had to be effected in a constitutional way. What this meant became clear when Gen Suharto spoke to the nation at 11.30 a.m., standing in open-neck shirt and black fez, after a morning series of meetings at his home with several Muslim and parliamentary leaders.
Invoking the memory of the martyrs who had created the constitution in 1945, he promised that if the citizens wished it he would withdraw and become a sage. He would not hand over to Vice-President Habibie, an old crony who apparently has no army backing.
Gen Suharto undertook instead to set up a reform committee including "leaders and experts from universities" and enact a new election law, as well as anti-monopoly and anti-corruption laws.
"General elections will be held as soon as possible based on the new elections law," Gen Suharto said. Later it emerged that this could be six months.
Under present laws, the Indonesian president and vice-president are elected for five-year terms by the People's Legislative Assembly (MPR), a 1,000-member body made up of 500 members of the House of Representatives, most elected by proportional representation, and 500 members directly appointed by the president. It meets only once every five years.
Gen Suharto was elected to a seventh five-year term by this body in March. It can be called into a special session by the House of Representatives.
Only three parties are allowed to contest elections - the ruling Golkar party, the Muslim-oriented United Development Party (PPP) and the Christian-Nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
Gen Suharto did not say if the new election law would allow other parties to compete for seats in the MPR. The last parliamentary elections, on May 29th, 1997, gave an overwhelming majority to Golkar.
He said he would reshuffle the cabinet and install a "reform cabinet", but he gave no details.
Meanwhile, the students who had been calling for his resignation arrived for a second day at the Indonesian parliament building. They found that the tanks and soldiers who confronted them on Monday had gone, apart from a few military policemen who let them file through the metal gates.
The army clearly had concluded that it was safer to let the students corral themselves in an enclosed space to continue their protests, a tactic some foreign governments had been urging privately.
Instead of the military, they found several dozen pro-Suharto students in black-and-yellow tunics from the youth movements of the three legal parties, but they told them to leave.
The growing crowd of students cheered the arrival of the leaders of the parliament's main factions, and House Speaker Harmoko, who on Monday called for Gen Suharto to step down but who, before the day was out, would back Gen Suharto's plan to buy time.
The students were now at least in control of the symbolic centre of government and free to insult the president to their hearts' content.
Some climbed onto the bellshaped roof and unfurled banners saying "Down with Suharto!" Few heard him make his address, but when they found out that he had not gone, they booed loudly.
For a time there was some debate on its merits, but as the day wore on the mood hardened. "I think the situation is actually getting worse," said a parliament archivist, Mr Togi Nainggolan. "They do not trust Suharto to keep his word."
What the president had promised would have been a political bombshell a month ago, said a Trisakti University student, "but after last week it is not enough."
They also pointed out that the president would still be in power when the universities shut at the end of June and their campaign would run out of steam. Dressed in university colours, with the orange jackets of the University of Indonesia predominant, the young people kept up a cacophony of noise all day, singing, chanting and banging empty plastic water bottles on concrete paving.
By darkness about 3,000 had settled in for the night in a parliament building ankle deep in plastic and paper litter. Strong light beams illuminated students on the roof still wielding flags and mobile phones.
Watching from a wheelchair on a balcony for most of the day was the legendary human rights activist Ponke Princen, a 72-year-old former Dutch soldier who in 1946 switched sides and fought for Indonesian independence.
"I never thought I would see this," he said. "The president thought he could get away with everything, including corruption and enriching his family. Maybe not any more."