Sketchy Response

Aft

er the horrific bombings in Bali, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri seemed finally to grasp the seriousness of the national crisis. She rushed to the scene of the tragedy, pushed through a tough anti-terror presidential decree and permitted the arrest of Abubakar Ba'asyir, the Muslim cleric suspected of being the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, which the U.S. has dubbed a terrorist organization. Indonesia was the slowest country in Southeast Asia to respond to terrorism post-Sept. 11¡Xand Bali showed graphically the need to intensify its vigilance. It seemed at last that Megawati was waking up. After all, the Bali attack gave her a rare opportunity to distance herself from Indonesia's extremist factions and forge an alliance with more moderate Muslims.

Last week, while the President was at an APEC meeting in Mexico, the domestic fight on terrorism stalled, due in large part to her political indecision. Megawati hasn't addressed the nation to explain the grave challenge Indonesia faces or attempted to rally its populace behind a crackdown on terrorists. Most crucially, she has given a cold shoulder to Indonesia's two largest Muslim organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which together boast some 70 million members. These were her most obvious allies in reining in Islamic radicalism, yet she has alienated them at precisely the wrong time. The chairman of one, Muhammadiyah, initially backed the President's tough post-Bali line. Now he's backpedaling, particularly on the arrest of Ba'asyir. "I reject Ba'asyir's strategy to achieve his ideas and goals," Syafii Maarif told TIME. "But his arrest was not based on enough legal evidence. The police should not arrest people at will without strong evidence."

"This could have been a political watershed for Megawati," says Hidayat Jati, senior consultant at the Castle Group business advisory. "The public needs to be engaged, otherwise she will lose their support."

To many, the President's aloofness comes as no surprise. "Mega is Mega," sighs Arbi Sanit, a professor of political science at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. "Expecting more than what she has done is like expecting a horse to have horns."

Part of the problem, of course, is that Muslim parties make up a small but critical part of her government. Indeed, her own Vice President, Hamzah Haz, is a longtime defender of radical Islamic groups. Late in October he told reporters that he planned to visit Ba'asyir in prison out of a feeling of "Muslim brotherhood." (Hamzah changed his mind at the last minute, sending a staff member in his place.) As for Ba'asyir, police held off from questioning him for two weeks while he was treated for respiratory problems. Still, resting in a police hospital in Jakarta, he was hearty enough last week to give caustic interviews accusing Megawati of caving in to demands from Washington.

In Bali, meanwhile, the probe into the tragedy continues. Last week, police released sketches of three possible suspects and detained one, an Indonesian man with shoulder-length hair, for questioning. And the bomb site is now being cleared in advance of a traditional ritual prescribed to spiritually cleanse the island after a mortal enemy attack. Priests plan to slaughter a deer, a bull, a cow, a goat, a turtle, a pig, a white swan, a red swan and a black dog with a black tongue, and each household on the island will erect bamboo poles laden with fruits, flowers and palm fronds. Rituals may vanquish ghosts, but they aren't known to scare off terrorists.