The protesters stayed busy. Last Monday they attacked at least 10 offices of ex-dictator Suharto’s Golkar Party in East Java, smashing windows and ransacking the interior. The next day they stormed a port in the town of Ketapang, forcing officials to halt ferry service to the nearby island of Bali. On Wednesday tens of thousands of people helped raze a two-story Golkar office in Surabaya, East Java’s capital. They burned effigies of Wahid’s rivals and demanded they be executed. Claiming that Golkar was trying to restore the Suharto clan to power, they threatened civil war if Parliament impeached Wahid, which it may do by July. Outnumbered police units fired warning shots and tear gas, but otherwise did not interfere. No one was killed during the rampage.
A Western diplomat suggested that the protests were planned. “Wahid’s clearly trying to intimidate the opposition,” he said. Either way, they seemed to help the Wahid cause. Legislators who’d been clamoring to bypass the Constitution and impeach Wahid immediately fell silent last week.
