HARD CHOICES

It is not pretty. Jakarta is still on edge. More than a week after rioters torched and trashed dozens of buildings, army troops with orders to shoot demonstrators on sight patrol the city. Police guard the ruins of the PDI headquarters after forcibly evicting Megawati's followers July 27.

Of the thousands who took to the streets after the raid, more than 100 remain in custody; most will face criminal charges. Labor leader Mochtar Pakpahan has been detained and is under interrogation. The gentlemanly Ridwan Saidi, head of a loose association of nongovernmental organizations called the Indonesian People's Assembly, has been held since Aug. 5. Soothsayer Permadi apparently was allowed to go home after a one-day session. Budiman Sudjatmiko, the 27-year-old leader of the People's Democratic Party (PRD) -- a small, illegal and allegedly communist group blamed by the government for inciting the unrest -- has gone into hiding to avoid arrest. After refusing a first, legally flawed police summons for questioning, Megawati agreed to appear at police headquarters Aug. 9.

Megawati has some tough choices to make. She has no party; her supporters have no official meeting place. She has called her ouster from the PDI a military-engineered coup and filed a suit against the government. The initial hearing, scheduled for Aug. 1, was delayed three weeks because the presiding judge said he had a toothache. If the courts do not reinstate her -- a likely outcome -- she will be unable to run in the June 1997 parliamentary elections. The government does not allow independent candidates, or any from a party other than the three it sanctions. In any case, Megawati has said she will continue to work within the existing system.

But Megawati is not in the wilderness yet. During the past six weeks she has become an icon for those unhappy with the government's grip on politics and the elite's hold on the economy. The military's crackdown has enraged her supporters; many ordinary Indonesians appreciate her muted but persistent defiance. Some believe that President Suharto may himself be displeased by the military's rough handling of Megawati and the PDI. Megawati may be at home, but she is not under house arrest.

The 49-year-old daughter of founding president Sukarno may be one of Indonesia's best-known yet least understood politicians. Until she was elected to Parliament in 1987, she was a suburban housewife with a university education (she studied agriculture and psychology) but no degree. Her husband, Indonesian businessman Taufiq Kiemas, is also a PDI member of Parliament. He is her third husband -- her first spouse was killed and her second marriage annulled -- and together they are raising three children.

Megawati is often faulted for choosing her words so carefully that their meaning is masked. Critics suggest that she lacks the leadership skills, the temperament and the ambition to survive in Indonesia's tough political climate. She rejects comparisons with other famously named Asian women.

Asked whether she wants to be the Corazon Aquino or Aung San Suu Kyi of Indonesia, she says: "I respect these people, but I am Megawati Sukarnoputri and I live in Indonesia. I will be myself." Indeed her reticence and apparent ability to exert influence indirectly are seen as signs of power by many Javanese.

Her allure certainly has not dimmed. On Aug. 1, a crowd of about 4,000 crammed into the court to hear the first day of her case against the government. They chanted her name and booed the assistant judges who adjourned the proceedings. As riot police stood ready in the corridors, Megawati's senior lawyer, R.O. Tambunan, appealed to her supporters: "Don't provoke trouble. We are using the only way open to us to fight injustice." The crowd dispersed without incident.

Tambunan later said that he will file a complaint with the Jakarta police and Parliament against Surjadi, whose government-backed PDI faction deposed Megawati as leader in June. Surjadi has claimed responsibility for the takeover of the PDI headquarters. Regional PDI offices throughout the country are also challenging the legitimacy of the congress that expelled Megawati.

Megawati's call for justice is being heard. As a woman who had been helping out in the PDI's kitchen during the sit-in told Asiaweek after four days in police custody: "I went to the PDI headquarters because a friend asked me to help. I knew nothing about politics. There I learned that I do have rights, and that is something I never knew before." But some already schooled in Indonesian politics are bitter. "The rights of the people have been destroyed," says one young man. "When the people talk about their rights, we are always answered by generals."

But has Suharto scripted the generals' response? "It's unlikely that Suharto himself would have [ordered the crackdown]," says one government official. "The Javanese like to see everything in its correct orbit: the moon, the sun, the stars. This is completely out of character." Abdurrahman Wahid, influential leader of Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama, believes that the attack on Megawati's PDI group is the result of a conflict within the military -- one which Suharto in typical style may use to smoke out overly ambitious leaders. "Now the armed forces have to find an accommodation between the different opinions," Wahid told Asiaweek.

Suharto's recognition of Surjadi as the new head of the PDI is conditional. Important political players in Jakarta believe that the president is still pushing for a compromise that would see Megawati and Surjadi form an uneasy truce within the PDI. If so, she would inevitably win back the party leadership at the next scheduled congress in 1998. Megawati Sukarnoputri will wait until then. But her followers may not be so patient.