Jakarta newspapers regularly publish accounts of outbreaks of violence somewhere in the country. Yesterday, they reported angry mobs rampaging in towns and cities along the northern coastal highway in Java, the most densely populated of the thousands of Indonesia's islands.
As usual, the targets were ethnic Chinese shopkeepers, but the immediate cause was said to be mounting anger over steep price rises caused by the economic crisis.
Jakarta has been quiet so far but the political temperature is rising dangerously in anticipation of angry demonstrations during the five-yearly session of the 1,000member People's Consultative Assembly, which will be held early next month to elect a new president and vice-president and endorse state policy guidelines.
After 30 years of monopolistic power, President Suharto is certain to be elected for a seventh term as the assembly consists of 500 government-appointed members, 75 military officers and 425 elected members dominated by his Golkar group.
Anticipating trouble ahead, the policy guidelines include decrees strengthening the president's powers in time of emergency. However, no political reform is envisaged (though in deference to the hard times delegates will, unlike before, pay for the use of the minibar in their hotels). Golkar has excluded all eight motions on reform tabled by the minority parties, including the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI) faction of Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri.
On January 10th, Ms Megawati declared that she would make a challenge for the leadership, saying that the ruling elite did not have the guts to challenge Suharto. This was "the strongest language she has used by a factor of 10", said a European diplomat, but since then the daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno has made no move to rally people against the incumbent.
Ms Megawati's potential as a challenger has in fact waned since the events of July 27th, 1996, when she was thrust into world headlines after being ousted from the leadership of the PDI in a government-backed coup, and several young supporters died in resulting street rioting.
"Megawati is no Corry Aquino [the former Philippines president], she is not a president in waiting," said another diplomat, expressing a view common here.
"Most people believe she does not have the personality to keep the archipelago together, much less Java, and she balks at what is necessary to bring about change - a revolution on the streets."
One of Ms Megawati's advisers admitted: "We currently have no political mechanism with which to challenge the government peacefully," and they had done no more than encourage students to picket the gates of parliament.
Protesting students have appeared at parliament, some with daring posters such as "Hang Suharto" and the army has not taken action, having relaxed its policy of coercion of opposition forces in recent years.
The magazine Tempo was closed in 1994 for daring to criticise the government but its headquarters, behind an open-air cafe in a Jakarta suburb, has become a centre for talk and cultural activity looking forward to the period after Pancasila, the state doctrine under which society is treated as an ideal family in which opposition has no role.
Also the media, especially the English-language Observer and Jakarta Post, has begun publishing criticisms unthinkable a few months ago and the Internet, with an estimated 60,000 subscribers, has also become a lively forum for criticism of the "new order".
One newspaper commentator complained that there was no solution to "corruption, collusion and nepotism" within the ruling system. Another poured scorn on the police for trying to create a scapegoat by arresting a prominent Chinese businessman, Mr Sofyan Wanandi, on a far-fetched bomb-making charge, suggesting that it was a set up to raise the waning spectre of communism which in past years ensured the collaboration of the population with Pancasila. (Mr Wanandi has since fled to Australia).
Student groups have also publicly criticised the action of Muslim youths who demonstrated outside the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank run by Mr Wanandi's brother where several academics oppose President Suharto's re-election.
Yesterday, a noted writer and architect, Y B Mangunwijaya, made a veiled criticism of Ms Megawati, writing that there were those who were too "powerless, crippled, incapable or too afraid to start the breakthrough" because of the fear of "angry crowds filling the streets and yelling for revolution".
Many groups among the middle class, numbering 20 million out of a population of 202 million, seek greater independence in the political, economic and legal system but have no means of promoting an alternative model.
A political crisis in the waning days of the Suharto hegemony had been widely forecast before the financial collapse. Now the middle class is angry about diminished standards of living and the exposure of cronyism at the top. However "some see Suharto as the problem but they also see him as the answer", says a veteran observer. "Who else could dismantle the family empire and the monopolies without an upheaval?"
President Suharto admitted this week that much of the gains of 30 years had been lost. One was the reduction from 60 to 11 per cent of people living in absolute poverty in the world's fourth most populous country. In 1995, Indonesia rose above "least developed nation" status and last year had a GDP per head of $1,200. It is now about $300 a head.
With zero growth forecast for this year, and unemployment rising fast, more riots are considered inevitable given the volatility of the masses. "When the Indonesian poor lose their job their first reaction is to throw stones," said a diplomat.
A US economist, Mr David Hale, said this week: "If this [the crisis] continues, we have the risk of not just economic depression but ethnic warfare and tribal warfare which could culminate in a revolution."
Against this background, students at Jakarta's universities are debating whether to take to the streets to channel the energy of pro-democracy forces. In present circumstances, said one analyst, "people will not expose their true positions until their hands are forced, but that could be very soon now".