The acceleration of events in Indonesia is awe-inspiring in its scope, frightening in its violence, and still very uncertain as to its outcome. A week that started with President Suharto's studied departure for a meeting in Cairo - as if in defiance of protests and to demonstrate that he was still in control - has ended with his hurried and pathetic return to a population demanding his immediate departure. If he thought the armed forces would be better able to reassert control over student rebellions in his absence by using force, this has proved a miscalculation to match that of any other comparable authoritarian ruler, such as the Shah of Iran in 1979.
The shooting dead of protesters has utterly rebounded on the regime by galvanising widespread support from the wider society. The results may be seen in three contrasting sets of images from the streets of Jakarta. Alongside the confrontations between troops and student or worker protesters there have been extraordinary scenes of fraternisation - telling a story of popular dialogue and uncertainty about whether the army leadership will choose to part company with President Suharto or put down the protests with Tiananmen-type ferocity. Then there have been the images of looting and street carnage, directed against Suharto's family cronies and their companies or in racist fashion against the increasingly beleaguered Chinese community which controls so much of the trade and business sectors he has favoured.
And, thirdly, there is the extraordinary evolution of demands put forward by the student protesters, which have so rapidly come to express the demands of Indonesian society as a whole. Their substance and rank order tell a profoundly important and inspiring story about the contradictory character of political and social change in Indonesia. At the top of the list are demands to reduce prices and provide jobs. It was the implementation of steep price increases with maximum impact on the living standards of the poor at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week, which sparked off the round of protests that has led to this crisis. One would not envy the task of whatever finance minister emerges from it in keeping the IMF package on track. It is now in shreds.
The list of demands then calls for repression of the people to be ended - a clear reference to the role of the armed and intelligence forces who have been widely accused of harassment and torture of the regime's opponents. It goes on to demand that the people be given back their sovereignty and then calls for national leaders to be changed. This reflects the emergence of much more credible opposition forces in recent days, some with extensive organisation. Finally, students are called on to unite with the armed forces. This may well presage the emergence of a transitional regime combining elements of the armed forces, some of the opposition and those in the existing regime with expertise in economic policy.