Whither Indonesia?

Abstract Written in the period between the June 1999 general election and the October runoff election that saw Abdurrahman Wahid claim the presidency of Indonesia, this article describes “a new phase in Indonesian politics” that has given rise to widely shared hopes within Indonesia and abroad that political stability will be restored, politics routinized, and the economy return to the growth path. The author explains why the chances that Indonesia will actually progress in this manner are slim. The article begins by describing the political process that governed the June elections that resulted in Megawati Sukarnoputri winning 153 seats in the Parliament (33.7 percent of the vote). Next the author forecasts how the October election would likely turn out. The relevance and importance of the situations in East Timor and Aceh figure importantly in the author's assessment of the long-term prospects for political and economic recovery in Indonesia.