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Since seizing power more than three decades ago, Suharto's military-backed regime has stifled every attempt to organise opposition. Now his 'New Order' government, and the country as a whole, is reaping the results. Angry crowds are out in the streets burning and looting because there are simply no viable political organisations for people to turn to in order to vent their intense frustrations about the collapsing economy. In Thailand and South Korea, the economic crisis saw old governments voted out and new reformist governments elected. This has been impossible in Indonesia because Suharto has built a political system in which power is concentrated almost completely in his own hands.

President Suharto won another five years in office from the 1,000 member People's Consultative Assembly on 10 March 1998. But his struggle to restore faith in his government's capacity to manage Indonesia's desperate currency crisis is far from over. The global spotlight is on Indonesia and the pictures are of riots, panic buying and Chinese traders grieving in their fire-gutted shops. A collapse of international confidence in the rupiah has sent the currency into free fall, leaving ordinary people angry, bewildered and uncertain about the future. At the heart of the drama is the 76 year old President Suharto and his titanic battle of wills with the world's banker of last resort, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In October 1997, Suharto called in the IMF in an attempt to cushion Indonesia from the effects of the currency crisis then affecting Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. He accepted their advice to close down sixteen badly performing banks without warning and shelve several mega-projects the IMF said Indonesia could not afford.

After years of hacking, pruning and trimming, Suharto had the formal political system just as he wanted it. Every five years the government party Golkar would win the general elections with an absolute majority. Every five years Suharto's tenure was dutifully renewed by the People's Consultative Assembly. Not once did the good President have to endure the indignity of debating a rival candidate.