Indonesia’s President Pleads to Keep Job as Protests Rage

Indonesia’s president made an impassioned plea for his political future before parliament Thursday, while security forces outside fired tear gas and plastic bullets at thousands of angry students demanding that he quit.

About 10,000 protesters threw rocks and gasoline bombs at lines of riot police and soldiers within a few hundred yards of the heavily guarded legislature. At least two dozen students were hospitalized.

Inside, President B. J. Habibie defended his turbulent 16 1/2-month-old presidency in a speech to the People’s Consultative Assembly, which on Wednesday is to choose the next head of state from among Habibie and two other candidates.

Habibie--who took over from his mentor, former President Suharto, in May 1998--insisted that he had done his best to fix Indonesia’s enormous problems and had launched sweeping economic and political reforms.

Fighting for his political life, Habibie blamed past authoritarian leaders for leaving him the “gigantic task” of solving the troubles in the world’s fourth most populous nation.

“As a simple human being, I realize that the whole crisis . . . cannot be fixed in only 521 days,” he said in his three-hour, nationally televised speech.

The legislature will debate the speech--and if most lawmakers vote against it in coming days, Habibie will have little choice but to withdraw from the presidential race.

Thursday’s protests in Jakarta, the capital, were fueled by a court ruling earlier in the day acquitting Suharto’s youngest son of corruption charges. That came only days after prosecutors dropped a corruption probe against Suharto himself.