Megawati’s Moment

The selection of Megawati Sukarnoputri as Indonesia’s president offers hope for stability in the world’s fourth-largest nation, a land racked by economic chaos and a constitutional crisis.

Donor nations have offered to keep the foreign aid coming. Singapore, Australia, the United States and the European Union have welcomed the change of leadership in the hope it will end months of political uncertainty that could increase ethnic violence across the country and create floods of refugees bound for neighboring nations.

Abdurrahman Wahid, the Muslim cleric who became president nearly two years ago in the country’s first democratic election in decades, would serve his nation best by urging his followers not to resist and to help get Indonesia back on its feet.

Although Wahid’s party won less of the vote in the 1999 elections than Megawati’s party, the legislative assembly picked Wahid. That decision proved disastrous because of Wahid’s incompetence and seeming preference for foreign travel rather than governing. When it came time to remove Wahid, the army backed Megawati. She has been cautious about speaking her mind but has to start now. First up: her plans to right the economy, ruined by corruption during the long reign of Suharto, the general who ousted Megawati’s father, Sukarno.

At the end of World War II, as colonialism was rooted out around the world, the pillars of Indonesia’s battle for freedom from Dutch rule were Sukarno and the army. Today’s Indonesia displays a different Sukarno and an army no longer beloved by the populace. But Megawati and the generals together have a chance to restore lost luster.