It was an ironic scene under the rain near Hotel Indonesia in Jakarta last Thursday. A few hundred yards and an hour separated the president, crowing about his government's successes, from the raw evidence of just how badly it has failed.

"My government is effective," President Abdurrahman Wahid told a group of students. "See in Aceh, security has little by little improved. In Irian the Koreans who were kidnapped by the Free Papua Movement have been