Margot Cohen, Pekanbaru, Riau – A tribal leader reaches over to grasp the gnarled, arthritic hand of a local elder. He straightens one finger and holds it upright. "This is good politics," he announces to the illiterate men, women and children crouched around him on the bare wooden floor. They nod their heads and smile shyly. Then he lets the elder's finger curve back towards the palm. "This is crooked politics," he intones.

That simple lesson in politics, demonstrated in the hamlet of Penasoserai in Riau province, is one that many Indonesians across the country know only too well. "Crooked politics" during Suharto's 32 long years as president is held responsible for the evils of inequitable development, which made government officials and business groups rich while depriving local communities of their land and livelihood. Tackling this bitter legacy is the task of reformasi, the word coined for Indonesia's combustible reform movement. Reformasi has released new hopes, but if change lags, frustrations could intensify to dangerous new levels.

In Jakarta, the years of repression have given way to a headlong – often headstrong – scramble to form new political parties, rewrite laws, and investigate the Suharto family wealth. In the provinces, however, reformasi has followed a different path. For now, at least, organizing new political parties is on the back-burner, while student activists – encouraged by their success in helping to remove Suharto – have turned their wrath on local officials whom they view as irretrievably corrupt. Together with their new allies in academic and business circles, they believe purging the bureaucracy is essential to implement policy reforms.

Coming to the fore, too, is a long-suppressed bitterness in the provinces towards Jakarta and the Javanese-dominated bureaucracy. The emotional outpouring is not confined to Aceh, East Timor and Irian Jaya – provinces with the most prominent histories of insurgency – but has emerged in the rest of the non-Java countryside as well. The mood is towards promoting local leaders and capturing from Jakarta a greater proportion of profits generated from local natural resources. Villagers are also striving to reclaim lands lost to large plantations, golf courses and other megaprojects fuelled by domestic and foreign investment. For their part, community leaders are pressing large companies to hire local workers and respond to welfare needs. Another source of tension in the provinces is the increasingly open resentment towards ethnic-Chinese traders and contractors.

Will all these tensions destroy Indonesia? In the short term, the clamour from the countryside does not appear likely to spark national disintegration, as the armed forces fears. Widespread disgruntlement with Javanese predominance is still tempered by strong nationalist feelings. With the exception of East Timor, the demands are for greater autonomy and a quicker pace of decentralization, rather than a desire for an outright split with Jakarta. The challenge remains for President B.J. Habibie – himself a product of the colonially termed "Outer Islands" – to slake the provinces' thirst for change.

Riau (population: 4 million) is an illustration of just how keen is that thirst. As riots raged through Jakarta on May 14, and Suharto's New Order government teetered on the edge, Muchtar Ahmad, the charismatic rector of Riau University, got together with a dozen friends in the business and academic fields to discuss ways to implement reformasi at the local level. By the time Suharto resigned on May 21, Muchtar and his colleagues had already formed the Riau Institute for Monitoring Reforms, with different divisions for law, education, politics and economics. "Ideally, the provinces must take the lead in working towards clean government," says Muchtar. "We don't want to wait for Jakarta."

In Riau, unpopular officials down the line have become targets of public disdain – from the governor of the province and mayor of its capital, Pekanbaru, to district chiefs and village heads. "The little Suhartos in the villages must be replaced," says Al Azhar, a local scholar of Malay literature and culture. Standing in the line of fire at the higher echelons of power is the affable Soeripto, 63, a retired lieutenant-general from central Java who has been Riau's governor for the past 10 years.

Fond of throwing karaoke parties in his private music pavilion at home, Soeripto was widely viewed as an ambassador in Riau for the Suharto family's diverse business interests, which include plantations, resorts and shipping. Soeripto's role in "coordinating" lucrative sales of Riau sand for reclamation projects in Singapore has been debated heatedly, although the governor maintains he has never profited personally. Soeripto, whose two terms as governor are up, plans to stay on through December to oversee a transition to his successor. But that's too slow for Riau's student activists and for Muchtar, who accuses Soeripto of being busy "salvaging his wealth."

Also the target of reformasi in Riau is Paris Ginting, a colonel from North Sumatra who has been in Pekanbaru for the past five years as the provincial government's chief of social and political affairs. "An official must dare to go naked! He must show his scabs! If he doesn't dare, then he's a hypocrite!" exclaims Paris, in keeping with the spirit of reformasi. But asked to cite a decision he now regrets, or any other example of a "scab," he is stumped.

A newly unfettered local press has reported claims by student protesters that Paris is linked to local gambling and prostitution – charges that the colonel vigorously denies. Pain flickers across his face as he recalls his family's bewilderment at the negative press coverage. "We cannot allow the law of the jungle. That's dangerous," he says.

The jungle passed judgment in June – Paris' transfer was abruptly announced. Soeripto also decided to authorize an investigation aimed at the Pekanbaru mayor, Oesman Effendi Apan, and submit a report of his own wealth to the Riau prosecutors' office, as expressly requested by the central government on June 11. (To the press, Soeripto offered a ballpark figure of 3 billion-4 billion rupiah, or $225,000-$300,750, which many critics say is still an understatement.)

Across Indonesia, such incidents of partial capitulation, if not defeat, have whetted the public appetite for taking on corrupt officials. Even homegrown bureaucrats, who once prided themselves on replacing their Javanese counterparts, are being caught in the net. That disturbs local leaders like Tenas Effendy, an advocate for the Orang Suku Petalangan, an indigenous minority group. "Government cadres from Riau will be wiped out," he laments. "Outsiders will be brought in. It will take a long time before locals can rise again." Like a growing number of Indonesians, Tenas wonders also about the standards to apply in the ongoing purge. "Perhaps only a five-year-old child is free of corruption, collusion and nepotism," he says. "Whoever is on top will be criticized."

Many officials of the ruling Golkar party, known for its allegiance to Suharto, are hoping that this brand of logic will work in their favour. If voters decide that nobody's perfect, they may opt for old faces in general elections scheduled for May 1999. Indeed, some analysts say current Golkar officials could survive reformasi, even if the party goes under. "They will all wear different clothes and assume different names," says Aris Abeba, the dapper head of information and publishing for Golkar's Riau branch. "The loyalty of Golkar cadres is very thin. They are more prone to think in terms of their own interests." Face facts, he argues: "Whoever is in power will still engage in corruption, collusion and nepotism. It's in the heart."

Family interest of a different sort lies close to the heart of Mohamad Yusuf, 67, a leader of the Sakai, an indigenous minority. His people used to populate the virgin forests of central Riau, before the land was taken over in the early 1990s by large companies to cultivate rubber and oil-palm trees. Yusuf says that his family, consisting of six wives and 11 children, was one of many that lost their ancestral land to Jakarta-approved development, for minimal compensation. Complaints filed with the police, the parliament, and local district officials did not draw much attention. "Suharto got 400 trillion rupiah, and we got 25,000 for a three-hectare plot," grumbles Yusuf.

Sitting bare-chested next to him, Zainal, 50, insists that with a change of president in Jakarta, "it's time for the Sakai to ask for the return of the land." He recalls nostalgically the old way of life: deer-hunting, fishing, wood-gathering. Then the forest was taken over "by rich people, important people," and Zainal and his family were transferred to a government-built house with a cement floor and zinc roof. Although this was an improvement over their usual shelter of leaves, logs and bark, little else has changed for the Zainal family in the trade-off for "civilization." Zainal still cannot afford to send any of his seven children to school, and his occasional daily wage of 5,000 rupiah for agricultural work is just enough to keep the family in sweet-potato flour. Rice is an unimaginable luxury.

Other Sakai families are slightly more fortunate. They can afford a diet of rice mixed with sweet potato, although now that the price of rice is climbing, the portions are shrinking. In addition, they've lost a source of income ever since Adei Crumb Rubber, the plantation company which holds cultivation rights to the surrounding land, reportedly cracked down on wood-gathering three months ago. Sakai families used to barter the collected wood for sacks of rice, but now have to rely solely on earnings from the sale, for 200 rupiah per kilogram, of heavy chunks of hardened rubber called damar. "It's an indirect form of murder," fumes Ridwan, another Sakai leader.

Undoubtedly, there is a close connection between land rights and provincial politics, say Riau intellectuals. Sakai leader Yusuf seems optimistic that the provincial government will hand over two hectares of land per family, for oil-palm cultivation. For his part, Tabrani Rab, head of a cultural think-tank in Pekanbaru, believes that the people's rights will be restored if a Riau native becomes governor. "We don't want a Javanese to assume leadership here," he says. "Behind the Javanese, there is always conspiracy with the conglomerates."

Some business groups are eager to prove their support for reformasi, however. At a June 9 meeting hosted by Muchtar's institute, representatives from Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper candidly discussed sensitive issues like unresolved land claims and employment of Riau natives. Throughout the night Riau Andalan was grilled by the institute's members, but as law professor Husnu Abadi told company representatives, "better we speak sharply here, than hit the streets." With smiles and reassurances, the officials promised to review all the complaints before them, and in particular to improve the company's strategy to recruit more locals.

Employment of Riau natives is a tricky problem that many domestic and foreign companies have grappled with over the past few years. Education levels are low in Riau, and so companies prefer to hire better-qualified people from outside the province. Some have got around the issue by applying the definition of a Riau native very loosely, but now Muchtar's institute wants more stringent criteria. That poses hurdles for companies like Caltex, which has been a major presence in Riau for the past 60 years and has 6,050 employees and another 25,000 contract workers. Gary Fitzgerald, managing director of Caltex Pacific Indonesia, says that roughly 1,000 of its employees were born in Riau, but his personnel office offers no clues on whether they are indigenous, as demanded by the reform-monitoring institute. Indeed, Fitzgerald says the company hires people strictly on merit, and doesn't make "distinctions by race or ethnic background."

Most importantly, reformasi advocates also want at least 1% of revenue from oil output in Riau to flow back to the local government. Currently the province, which supplies nearly half of Indonesia's oil, gets nothing. In 1997, Jakarta earned an estimated $3 billion in oil revenue and taxes; meanwhile, hundreds of Riau villages are still classified as "backward." In mid-June student activists protested at this inequality outside Caltex, and plan to take their demands straight to President Habibie. But Riau Governor Soeripto believes they should ask for a percentage from Pertamina, the national oil firm, and not from Caltex. Indeed, Pertamina gets 88% of total revenue under a production-sharing contract, while Caltex gets only 12%.

Another burning issue for Riau's student activists is the economic dominance of the ethnic Chinese; some believe reformasi should be used to end this control. On the island of Bengkalis, four hours by speedboat from Pekanbaru, the military – with an imperiousness reminiscent of the Suharto days – prevented students from staging a demonstration against corruption. The students insisted that their protest would be peaceful, but rumours floated nonetheless that they wanted to burn down the town, together with Chinese-owned shops. The talk startled the ethnic-Chinese community, which has long viewed Bengkalis as a haven. "We fully support reformasi," insists Hamid Dahlian, an ethnic-Chinese businessman and community leader on the island. "But the people are worried that the students will be manipulated by other parties." Yet for all the emotions it is churning up, reformasi – well-handled – can be gratifying. Ronald Siregar, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from north Sumatra, has teamed up with a Chinese partner to build Pekanbaru's first container port. The port – which commenced operations in December – will enable exporters to ship directly from Pekanbaru to Singapore, he says. That means Riau now has the ability to export its furniture, fruits and coconuts. And the best part, thanks to reformasi, is that the Suharto family no longer can cast a shadow over this and other enterprises. "Before we were afraid to do business. The family could take over anytime," says Siregar, with a smile. "Now, we don't have to feel afraid."

[According to a report in June 25 Jakarta Post, at a flag-hoisting ceremony to commemorate Jakarta's 47th anniversay, the governor of Jakarta, Sutiyoso, said that 37 city officials have been fired for violating regulations and codes of conduct - James Balowski.]