ABSTRACT
By early 1998, major cracks were appearing in the established political arrangements underpinning Suharto’s rule. A nascent university student movement mobilised against Suharto and by May spearheaded a popular challenge to the New Order. As the deepening political crisis converged with a debilitating economic crisis, the reliance of Suharto’s regime on old tactics and patterns of survival politics was no longer able to cope with the nature of the growing pressures for change. These pressures emanated from broad sections of society as well as from key elements of the New Order elite. The legitimacy of Suharto’s continued right to rule rested on the twin claims that his New Order could deliver the benefits of economic development and political stability to its people. Indonesia’s economic collapse of 1997-1998, which witnessed most businesses go into insolvency, placed millions of Indonesians out of work and threatened to have almost 50 per cent of Indonesians living below the poverty line by 1999, undermined Suharto’s first claim to power. Political signs of instability evident in 1996, and spiralling out-of-control by mid-1998, undermined his second claim to power.1 The Suharto regime’s inability to cope with the Asian economic meltdown of the late-1990s exacerbated the ongoing political crisis of presidential succession and resulted in Suharto’s resignation on 21 May.
