Looking back, it’s easy to see this was the beginning of the end.

On 27 July 1996, gangs backed by Suharto’s military attacked the Jakarta offices of the Democratic Party of Indonesia (PDI). The dictator had previously arranged a rigged PDI conference to get her dumped as leader, but her supporters had defiantly occupied the headquarters.

The attack provoked mass upheavals usually called the 27 July riots, though they were much more political than most riots, with people marching and chanting slogans. The unrest shocked the regime, which was quick to blame it on an obscure far left group called the People’s Democratic Party (PRD), led by Budiman Sudjatmiko.

Three months earlier I’d met with Budiman and his comrades in a shabby little house in the crowded Jakarta district of Tebet. They were still assembling their tiny organisation and preparing a declaration, not dreaming what a storm was about to hit them.

The government’s charge that the PRD fomented the riots was idiotic. They were way too small to cause unrest on the scale of 27 July. But Suharto needed scapegoats.

Budiman and other official PRD leaders went on the run until the cops tracked them down. Others, who had kept a lower profile, maintained an underground organisation that sent me stirring e-mails -- but after the riots things looked pretty grim, with Megawati’s movement paralysed and the far left marginal. The PRD leaders made defiant statements in court and awaited their fate.

***

In April 1997 I returned to Jakarta. It was election time, but so what? The polls were rigged at the best of times. All the more so now with a Suharto stooge leading the PDI, and the Muslim-based PPP unwilling to challenge the regime.

I heard they were sentencing Budiman and other PRD figures, so I headed for Central Jakarta Court. Arriving early, I sat on a bench outside and fell into a conversation with a pleasant man. What was I doing here? Oh, I was here to see the sentencing. Why my interest in that? Oh, I had met Budiman before. I vaguely realised I was name-dropping, skiting about knowing Budiman, so I changed the topic, asking about the pleasant man’s background. ‘Oh, I’m a police detective.’

Ever feel idiotic and scared at the same time?

But he wandered off harmlessly. I went into the packed courtroom, where attendance was a political statement. We heard muffled shouting when the prisoners arrived, then they stamped up the stairs yelling ‘boikot pemilu!’ – boycott the elections. The media rushed about; the crowd cheered; supporters gave the prisoners flowers. Budiman made a fiery declaration, and they sentenced him to 13 years.

Suharto’s fall would get him out much sooner, but at the time it seemed terrible. I drifted outside, where a token demonstration on the sidewalk faced aggressive cops who kept pushing the protestors back.

Then suddenly the demonstrators turned and charged onto the road, setting off with banners in an illegal street march. The flabbergasted police stumbled after them.

A westerner with a camera looks like a journalist. I ran ahead of the protestors, went down on one knee as they marched, pointed the camera up at them and clicked as they approached. Look at the young activists, smiling bravely just before the police laid into them. You won’t find more courageous people than this.

***

The elections were proving more interesting than I thought. The regime allowed a ‘festival of democracy’, with not only political rallies but above all the arak-arakan, massive motorcades around city streets. Macho young men gunned their motorbikes, people piled on top of trucks, everyone wore party colours.

I couldn’t believe how big the PPP motorcades were getting. Was this normal? No, something important was happening. With Megawati sidelined, support for the PDI had collapsed, while everyone despised the ruling Golkar organisation. So the PPP became the focus of opposition despite its tame-cat leaders. For once this useless party attracted huge crowds, in an amazing phenomenon called Mega-Star.

Mega was short for Megawati, the star was the PPP symbol. Megawati’s angry supporters were joining the PPP rallies in a massive show of opposition to the regime. The city ground to a halt. Twice I travelled across a capital city whose major roads were gridlocked for hours. Once I was stuck in a bus while people danced on the roof. It all culminated in street fighting. This was a confused but real uprising of the masses, and somewhere out there amongst them, the PRD was doing its best to hammer home a third and more radical dimension, with the slogan Mega-Bintang-Rakyat, Mega-Star-The People.

It was a good slogan, for the people were starting to move. Suharto’s regime would survive little more than a year.