Raphael Pura, Jakarta – As Indonesia teeters on the edge of economic disaster, most eyes are on President Suharto, its stubborn, aging leader. But the brunt of the burden of saving Indonesia's economy rests on the shoulders of another man: Ginandjar Kartasasmita, an ardent nationalist and born-again reformer.

If Mr. Ginandjar fails in his current job, as the nation's senior economic minister, it will be bad news not only for Indonesia and its neighbors, but also for the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Ginandjar – a lanky 57-year-old former air force officer – is the IMF's last, best hope to make one of the agency's biggest, most controversial bailouts succeed. A blown bailout would likely trigger a fresh storm of criticism over the fund's handling of Asia's financial crisis, and could hammer other Asian economies anew.

But the articulate, impeccably tailored Mr. Ginandjar is no timid bureaucrat or fuzzy theoretician. Working up to 20 hours a day, Mr. Ginandjar has kept the $43 billion IMF plan on the rails, become Indonesia's most credible public spokesman and soothed the edginess that characterized the IMF's earlier attempts to deal with Jakarta.

Indonesian acquaintances reckon Mr. Ginandjar quietly relishes the challenge of his high-risk post because success could boost his prospects for an even bigger job. Indonesia-watchers for years have pegged Mr. Ginandjar as a possible Suharto successor, a perception that adds another perilous dimension to the maze he must navigate.

Mr. Ginandjar dismisses such ambitions. "Instead of eyeing a higher office, I'm still thinking whether I can really do this job," Mr. Ginandjar says. "If I fail, I'll fail the whole country."

The IMF is counting heavily on him to ensure that doesn't happen, says Stanley Fischer, the fund's deputy managing director. "We are under no illusions everything will be smooth sailing from now on," Mr. Fischer says.

In March, when Mr. Suharto gave Mr. Ginandjar his current, cumbersome title of coordinating minister for economy, finance and industry, he also gave him a sweeping mandate: Make economic policy, and renegotiate the IMF rescue package – after two earlier agreements unraveled.

Mr. Ginandjar might appear to have been made captain of a sinking ship. Frustrated over soaring prices, lost jobs and Mr. Suharto's authoritarian rule, many Indonesians are clamoring for change in increasingly violent protests.

Still, Mr. Ginandjar's nearly 30-year-long government career has been a preparation for just such a role. "Ginandjar is in absolutely the most powerful position possible," says a Jakarta-based foreign economist. "He's clearly the dominant minister in the cabinet."

Mr. Ginandjar is known in Indonesia as a proud economic nationalist, as well as a populist. He champions state support for indigenous Indonesians, and often criticizes the large ethnic-Chinese owned conglomerates that dominate the country's private sector. "They are paper tigers, more image than substance," he says.

But many acquaintances portray him as a pragmatic, politically astute survivor, not an ideologue. A Japan-trained chemical engineer and self-tutored economist, he evinces the image of a studious intellectual in tortoise-shell spectacles. But his hobbies – martial arts, tennis and scuba diving – reveal a taste for action. "He's a handful, he's quick-witted," says a US-based economic consultant who has dealt with him extensively. "He likes to mix it up."

As Indonesia's economic point man, Mr. Ginandjar will need those skills. He must walk a tightrope between enforcing the painful IMF reforms and pleasing his embattled 76-year-old boss, Mr. Suharto, who expects personal loyalty and obedience above all.

Any sign that Mr. Suharto is again wavering from IMF commitments will put Mr. Ginandjar in a dilemma. If Indonesia's economy implodes, a political backlash could sweep Mr. Suharto from power and taint all those who served him. But there's a political upside for Mr. Ginandjar if he can steer Indonesia toward recovery and be seen as a reformer.

"He is a politician – not a technocrat, but a 'techno-pol,'" says Faisal Basri, a University of Indonesia economist and proreform activist. His goal "is to maintain his reputation and his image, because I think he's one of the potential candidates as next leader, and he realizes that."

It would be a long, hazard-strewn leap to higher office. Constitutionally, only Indonesia's compliant legislative upper house, the People's Consultative Assembly, can select the president and vice president. And Mr. Suharto and Vice President B.J. Habibie were just installed for a term that doesn't expire until 2003.

But Indonesia isn't facing ordinary times, and popular support for Mr. Suharto is at its lowest ebb since he came to power in 1966. Student protesters and other critics are calling for Mr. Suharto to open the political system to greater participation, or step down.

Mr. Ginandjar disclaims political ambitions, saying the next president should come from a younger generation. "If I can survive this task and I can lead or guide the economic recovery, I'll be most happy," he says in an interview. "I'll probably be at the peak of my career as a public man. I don't see myself in any other position."

Still, he faces political pitfalls. His selection as economic chief is a textbook demonstration of Mr. Suharto's savvy at playing his strongest deputies off one another, some analysts say. It checks the ambitions of Mr. Suharto's new vice president, Mr. Habibie, a Ginandjar rival. At the same time, Mr. Suharto decisively replaced the team of veteran economic technocrats led by long-serving adviser Widjojo Nitisastro, with whom he had grown disenchanted.

Mr. Ginandjar wasn't involved with the two earlier rounds of IMF talks, in October and January, since he was then chief of Indonesia's National Development Planning Board, or Bappenas. The IMF's unhappiness with Indonesia's failure to comply with the second agreement led it in early March to delay disbursement of $3 billion in assistance.

Once elevated to his new post, Mr. Ginandjar led Jakarta in three weeks of new negotiations, ending with an agreement last month. Those involved credit him with keeping the talks moving, in sessions that often ran from dawn to midnight.

The meetings sometimes grew heated over sensitive issues such as how to cut food and fuel subsidies. Says Mr. Ginandjar of the IMF and World Bank negotiators: "They were insisting on changing habits that have been with us a long time, and they wanted to do it overnight."

Mr. Ginandjar contends the talks finally succeeded because the Jakarta reached a "consensus" with the IMF on the need to maintain a "social safety net" in the reform program, aimed at pre-empting a popular backlash. In addition, he says, the fund acknowledged that Indonesia's $68 billion in private foreign debt had to be addressed more directly by Jakarta. "The most important [concern] is the recognition that the corporate-debt problem is a cause of the crisis," he says.

"It was a very impressive show," says World Bank Indonesia country director Dennis de Tray of the negotiations. "In a relatively short time period, he won the respect of his own team members and the IMF."

An Indonesian colleague involved in the rescue plan says "he's a real manager, what Indonesia didn't have before. Ginandjar set out specific tasks and timetables – you do this, you do that – and kept things moving."

But the tough part is just beginning. Mr. Ginandjar must now ensure Indonesia sticks by its reform pledges, including new and unpopular fuel-price increases of 25% to 71% – one of the key issues sparking the most recent riots. In addition, he must cope with a potentially unruly array of cabinet colleagues, many of whom are united only in their loyalty to Mr. Suharto and his family. Among them: Industry and Trade Minister Mohamad "Bob" Hasan, one of Mr. Suharto's oldest and most trusted confidants; and the president's eldest daughter, Social Welfare Minister Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana.

In recent weeks, the outspoken Mr. Hasan and other Suharto loyalists have made controversial remarks on aspects of the IMF program, shaking confidence in Jakarta's reform commitments. Mr. Ginandjar, who was forced to tidy up after the remarks, insists the cabinet is now working smoothly, and that he has Mr. Suharto's confidence.

Others aren't so sure how long it might last. "If Suharto wanders [on reforms], Ginandjar will wander with him," says a Jakarta-based foreign economist. "He can't afford to alienate him."

What sets Mr. Ginandjar apart from his predecessors, who tended to be economic theorists and technocrats, are some of his deep-seated social and political sensibilities. The son of an aristocratic ethnic Sundanese family from West Java, who were staunch backers of former President Sukarno's Parti Nationalis Indonesia, Mr. Ginandjar enjoyed a privileged upbringing. But he absorbed the ideals of nationalism and populism that characterized the Sukarno era.

After studying at Indonesia's premier engineering school, the Bandung Institute of Technology, he won an air force scholarship to the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, where he also learned Japanese. On his return, he left active air force duty in the early 1970s to hone his bureaucratic skills in the powerful State Secretariat.

By 1985, he headed the country's Investment Board, and from there moved to minister of mines and energy, presiding over the disposition of Indonesia's vast mineral resources. He became chief of the Bappenas, the planning board, in 1993.

Mr. Ginandjar built a reputation as an economic nationalist and a patron of Indonesia's indigenous citizens, or pribumis, who make up the majority of the population but who are economically weak. This has won him an enthusiastic following among some young Indonesian intellectuals and pribumi entrepreneurs.

Some Indonesian and foreign economists worry that Mr. Ginandjar's nationalist sentiments could color his commitment to market-driven policies. As planning chief, he favored poverty-fighting programs, such as small-business loans and village education, over pursuit of all-out economic growth led by foreign investment and Indonesia's mainly ethnic Chinese big-business groups.

"Ginandjar's track record shows that his gut instinct is not market-friendly," contends Sjahrir, an economist and managing director of the Institute for Economic and Financial Research in Jakarta. "Zhu Rongji he's not."

Detractors are critical of some elements of Mr. Ginandjar's campaign to promote pribumi entrepreneurship. In earlier jobs, Mr. Ginandjar had wide power to award state contracts and point foreign investors toward local partners. In the early 1990s, for example, as mining minister, he provided an opportunity for Bakrie Group's chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, to acquire a stake in a huge Indonesian copper mine, controlled by US-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. The result: Mr. Aburizal eventually sold half his investment for about the same price as his entire original purchase. Mr. Aburizal didn't respond to written requests for an interview.

Mr. Ginandjar rejects suggestions of favoritism or cronyism. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in December 1996, he characterized Mr. Aburizal and other pribumi executives as "a group of people who have shown their ability. I helped them to become big, and I hope they will help others." He declared that "I have no interest in their businesses, I have no relations with them."

Still, critics contend Mr. Ginandjar is flawed by the political culture of privilege and patronage for which Mr. Suharto is under attack. While Mr. Ginandjar lacks deep personal or business links to the president, he and his relatives – like many in Indonesia's ruling establishment – try to maintain good relations with the first family, according to Ginandjar acquaintances.

Consider that just last October, after the government halted many huge infrastructure projects, Mr. Ginandjar's planning board recommended that 15 be reinstituted – including one backed by Mr. Suharto's daughter, Mrs. Rukmana. At the time, Mr. Ginandjar declined to respond to requests for comment; ultimately, the projects didn't proceed.

Some Indonesian analysts find it ironic that Mr. Ginandjar has now become the government's strongest advocate of the market-oriented reforms prescribed by the IMF. But his defenders think Mr. Ginandjar's views are changing with the times. Mr. Faisal, the University of Indonesia economist, says, "It's a different Ginandjar compared with the one of five or 10 years ago.... He's more pragmatic and realistic," he says. "Ginandjar is becoming a pro-market advocate."

Mr. Ginandjar himself sees no contradiction in his past and present ideas. "Eventually the market will prevail, there's no way you can subvert it," he says. "It's like water running from the mountains to the sea, you can try to stop it, it may meander here and there, but eventually it will reach the sea."

[Richard Borsuk in Jakarta and Bob Davis in Washington contributed to this article.]