Hospital workers view bodies of those killed in a shopping mall fire sparked by rioters.   (Reuters Photo)

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 16, 1998; Page A01

JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 15 – As heavily-armed troops backed by tanks and armored vehicles patrolled the debris-strewn streets of this ravaged capital today, Indonesians tallied the victims of Thursday's violent outburst – and anticipated the next act in the political drama being played out in the cloistered confines of the presidential residence.

With the death toll from Thursday's rioting now more than 200 and rising – and with foreign embassies, including the United States, arranging charter flights to evacuate their nationals from this shocked and devastated city – President Suharto remained closeted with his advisers, giving no hint of how he intended to respond to the mounting calls for his resignation, including one from a breakaway faction of his own party.

While many observing this cryptic shadow play remained convinced that Suharto's 32-year regime is nearing its end, few here offered specific scenarios for how the finale – if it is near – might come about.

"You still don't know what he's thinking, because he hasn't said anything," said a Western diplomat. "The people who are going to decide aren't talking about what they're going to do. It's going to remain a closed book for a while."

In an act intended to mollify a public angry and frustrated over a deteriorating economic situation, the government announced it is revoking hefty price increases on fuel and electricity imposed 10 days ago. Those price hikes, coming atop the hardship already being felt here since the economy collapsed last year, prompted a series of sometimes violent riots and added fuel to the demands of university students who have been staging near-daily protests calling for Suharto's resignation and reform of Indonesia's closed and corrupt political system.

Indonesian police officer hits a looter with his rifle butt in central Jakarta.   (AP Photo)

The price hikes were demanded by the International Monetary Fund as a condition of a $43 billion bailout. So today's reversal – aimed at defusing widespread hostility to the regime – has put Indonesia back on a collision course with its international financial backers. The IMF team in Jakarta left in the face of the unrest.

But the move to rescind the price hikes seemed like a belated effort to contain the rage when viewed against the backdrop of the devastation wrought by Thursday's violence. Large sections of Jakarta show the scars of the burning and looting: Charred vehicles still litter some streets, buildings smolder and schools and businesses remain closed.

Banks were looted, and automatic teller machines destroyed. Car dealerships and the cars inside were burned. In South Jakarta, all the windows of a warehouse-sized Toys R Us were smashed, and the store was bare. Plate-glass windows in high-rise office buildings were smashed. Service stations were destroyed.

Many stores and businesses went to great lengths to avoid ransacking, usually advertising themselves on makeshift placards as Muslim-owned or "Pribumi," meaning "native Indonesian."

A McDonald's outlet on M.H. Thamrin Street covered its golden arches with large sheets of cloth, apparently to avoid damage if the riots took on an anti-foreign tone; one sign on the McDonald's touted it as "Muslim-owned," and another sign sought to show sympathy for the demonstrators, reading, "Long Live Reforms!"

Down the street, the upscale Plaza Indonesia shopping center, home to fashionable boutiques and designer shops, was ringed with barbed wire and protected by army tanks.

The Mangga Dua section of the capital, a lower-middle-class market area of North Jakarta near Chinatown, showed some of the worst damage, and several buildings were still burning this afternoon.

There was more rioting today, but it was more scattered and on a smaller scale than Thursday's unrest. Soldiers and marines kept up a highly visible presence, blocking off key streets leading to some of the hardest-hit areas and parking tanks and armored vehicles at major intersections. Four other armored vehicles were stationed outside the Defense Ministry in the center of the city.

Aside from sporadic incidents, the streets were eerily calm and mostly devoid of traffic as public transportation all but stopped and many people stayed indoors.

Meanwhile, the city began counting the dead, and it appeared that the toll would be far worse than believed as bodies were discovered in the burned-out shells of stores and shopping malls set ablaze during the rampage. At least 200 persons are believed to have been killed, mostly people trapped in burning buildings.

The most ghastly scene was at the five-story Yogya Plaza shopping center in East Jakarta, where 175 badly burned bodies were discovered today. The victims are believed to have been looters who had entered the mall before it was set on fire, and who perished as the flames raced through the structure.

The remains of scores of people were taken to the Cipto Mankkusosmo hospital in the center of town and spread out in two large rooms. Those that had been identified were placed in plastic bags with pink tags, and the others were spread out on a tile floor. Relatives peered down at the charred remains, holding cloths over their mouths and noses against the stench of death.

A young man named Dede Sutisna found the body of his brother, Dedi. "There was looting, and then the building caught on fire," he said. An uncle, Thamrin, scolded the young man for mentioning the looting.

Thamrin lost his job as an office clerk six months ago – a victim, he said, of the economic crisis. Now he has no money and no means to transport his nephew's body from the morgue, he said.

"I don't have a car or anything," he said. "I don't know what to do now. If you want to take a body and have it buried, you need to have a car, or pay cash." He added, "I don't know who is responsible. But we are feeling the pain."

The destruction and the death toll make this by far the worst spasm of rioting to hit the capital in decades, and add to the pressure on the 76-year-old Suharto, who so far has remained aloof from the growing calls for his resignation.

In Cairo, where he was attending a meeting of developing countries before rushing back, Suharto was quoted as saying that if the people no longer wanted him, he would not use force to stay in power. But today his information minister, Alwi Dahlan, tried to clarify the statement, saying Suharto only offered to step aside, not resign. He left vague the distinction between the two.

But the pressure appeared to be mounting on the president, with a faction of his ruling political machine, Golkar, joining the chorus of voices demanding that he quit. The Kosgoro faction announced that it was withdrawing support from Suharto and asking him to step down, marking the first break in the history of the ruling party.

"It's a sign that people are deserting," said a Western diplomat.

The key player in any resignation scenario remained the country's powerful armed forces, or Abri, and tonight there were no clear signs where Abri's top commanders stood.

Diplomats and military analysts said they believed Thursday's riots pose a dilemma for Abri. The military is faced with a division in its ranks over how to deal with the protesters, with the marines showing public sympathy for the young people in the streets. The sight of marines in their scarlet berets glad-handing young demonstrators was repeatedly broadcast on Indonesia's state-controlled television news .

The English-language Jakarta Post newspaper ran a front-page photo of marines marching down riot-torn Salemba Raya Street alongside the protesters, and several marines had their clenched fists raised defiantly in the air.

Given those extraordinary scenes, any military-ordered crackdown on the anti-Suharto protests now runs the risk of splintering the armed forces.

While the military commanders meet behind closed doors, Suharto's civilian critics have tried to keep up the pressure. One group has formed its own council, a kind of cabinet-in-waiting, that it hopes can preempt any military attempt to set up a ruling council.

The key figure behind the new civilian group is Muslim leader and academic Amien Rais, who has emerged as Suharto's most vocal public critic. Speaking at a mosque today, Rais told worshipers, "This regime is facing its end, its death. There's no way to postpone it."

As the political maneuvering continued, foreign embassies proceeded with their plans to evacuate their nationals until the crisis subsides. The road to Jakarta's airport was jammed with foreigners trying to flee on commercial airliners or on one of the chartered jets brought in to help with the evacuations.

"I can't say that I was personally under threat," said Ed Jones, 49, a construction manager from Houston, who was leaving on a hastily planned vacation with his wife and daughter. "There's a feeling of uneasiness, that the turmoil would expand beyond the business area and into the residential areas. Better safe than sorry."