Jay Solomon, Sleman – At high noon July 7, 700 Indonesian villagers descended upon this district's local legislature in a noisy convoy of motorcycles, red banners and clove cigarette smoke.

Unsatiated by former President Suharto's resignation in May, they were after the jobs of their village heads and the district's chief administrator. The protesters hoisted their banners, depicting reform slogans, blocked the building entrance and for a couple of hours blustered about the officials' ties to the Suharto family. The officials inside didn't come out; the villagers vowed they'd be back.

Indonesians are headhunting. In a raw outburst of vengeance, this depression-struck nation is seeking political change at every level of society. From the islands of Sumatra to Sulawesi to Irian Jaya, President Suharto's fall has sent the rest of Indonesia scrambling to eradicate all those complicit in the corruption of the past 32 years. If left unchecked, Indonesians warn, history suggests the current urge to purge could get bloodier. "The village heads have been even more arrogant in their [abuse of] power than Suharto," says Suwandi Subrato, a local leader here of Indonesia's United Development Party.

Few tools for restraint

The political backlash has even staunch advocates of reform worried that the situation could quickly disintegrate into chaos. Lacking effective democratic and legal institutions, Indonesian authorities possess few tools to channel the reform spirit and thus prevent it from becoming an exercise of wanton vengeance. In effect, Indonesia's governmental system has now been discredited, implicating vast numbers of those who had anything to do with it during the previous government. "When the people have a chance to take revenge, they will," warns Budi Susanto, director of Yogyakarta province's Legal Aid Foundation.

So unsettled are some leaders here that they've asked for military protection from constituents who have threatened to destroy their homes and property. Others have actually hired "hit men" for security, according to Mr. Susanto.

Warning signs

The signs of potential mayhem are already apparent. Take the plight of Fajar Pribadi, the village head of Ngestihardjo, in Bantul district. Villagers have descended upon his office on two occasions, accusing him of corruption and demanding he resign at once. They charge that he bribed his way into office, misused village funds and fraudulently resolved land claims. The catch, he insists: He's innocent.

"I agree with the villagers' reform goals," Mr. Fajar says. "But they have no evidence [against me]." The reform movement, he adds, is being manipulated by third parties for ulterior motives. The manipulators, he claims, are his political rivals, whom he won't name but says are eager to grab power themselves. "They were drunk and underage," he says of the demonstrators who demanded his resignation. "Many didn't even come from this village... They said they were sent by some unknown 'team.'" To cool things down, Mr. Fajar has held dialogues with his detractors – while at the same time beefing up his security.

'A dark history'

Indonesia's brief political history – it won independence from the Dutch in the late 1940s – offers little solace to incumbent politicians such as Mr. Fajar. In the mid-1960s, after Mr. Suharto came to power following a failed Communist coup, village leaders associated with the Indonesian Communist Party were purged, with many sent to island prisons or to their deaths. "We're worried it could turn into anarchy," Mr. Fajar says, adding that "historically this village has a dark history" of political retribution.

In the nearby town of Banguntapan, village head Abdullah Sajad also is running scared. Villagers there have started questioning the whereabouts of funds raised from village land sales and why some of their land claims have taken so long to show up on official registers. So far, he says, nobody has demanded he step down, but Mr. Abdullah concedes: "I'm worried that's coming." Meanwhile, he says he's making sure "to increase the quality of services to the people."

Herein lies one of Indonesia's greatest challenges in the post-Suharto era: promoting a democratic system with a population unschooled in democracy, or much else. "People were simply taught not to think," says Loekman Soetrisno, a professor at Gadjah Mada University.

Breeding contempt

Moreover, local districts have been forced by the central government to accept village administrators chosen by Indonesia's three official political parties, which has bred contempt, Indonesians say. "Their closeness to the central power encouraged them to treat villages as their own little state authority," says Warsita Utomo, a political analyst at the university. Local officials unilaterally bought and sold villagers' land and imposed fees as they wished, answering only to Jakarta, he says.

Now, with the economy in crisis and the central government weakened, many Indonesians wax almost nostalgically about the discipline and control under Mr. Suharto's rule – heavy-handed as it was. The transition to democracy, they warn, could be long and painful. "There is already a breakdown in social order – nothing is controlling and nothing is controlled," argues the influential Indonesian writer Y.B. Mangunwijaya of Yogyakarta. "You might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it's already on fire."