Vaudine England, Jakarta – In a quirk of history, two very different Indonesian women won honours recently.

Megawati Sukarnoputri became President, and 28-year old Dita Indah Sari won a newly created gong – a women's category added this year to the annual Magsaysay Emerging Leaders awards, presented by a Philippine foundation in honour of former president Ramon Magsaysay.

While Ms Megawati was the acceptable middle-class face of opposition to Suharto, it was Ms Sari and her colleagues who ran the underground cells, bore the brunt of oppression and saw friends die and disappear.

While Ms Megawati represents the core of unitary-state nationalism, which would retrieve East Timor from independence if it could, Ms Sari was the lone Indonesian voice two years ago speaking in support of East Timor's right to self-determination. When even many of her progressive friends were in shock at the insult to Indonesian nationhood, it was Ms Sari who said the sooner Jakarta let go of East Timor the better.

Both women are university dropouts. But whereas Ms Megawati's lack of academic achievement resulted from the vagaries of her father's career as founding president, for Ms Sari the end to her studies came through activism and imprisonment.

Ms Sari's career as a labour organiser and member of the small, legal and left-leaning People's Democratic Party was strangely intertwined with Ms Megawati's. Just before military-backed thugs attacked Ms Megawati's office in 1996, dozens of activists such as Ms Sari were rounded up, beaten, jailed and blamed for the attack and resulting unrest. Sentenced in 1997 to five years in jail for subversion, she was released in mid-1999. While Ms Sari was in jail, her mother died but she was not allowed out for the funeral.

Nowadays, Ms Sari is a savvy leader of the National Front for the Indonesian Workers' Struggle. She can whip up demonstrations of thousands of workers who, understandably, believe they have a right to earn more than US$40 a month.

Ms Sari was born on December 30, 1972, in Medan, Sumatra, to middle-class parents and moved to Jakarta in 1988. Her workers' movement now has more than 20,000 members, and she makes no secret of the fact that the bigger it gets the better. From a beginning among women workers in textile, shoe, food and drinks factories, she has now included maritime workers and others. She is represented in 14 provinces across the country, including Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali and Kalimantan. International Labour Organisation rules about freedom of association and the likes were ratified by former president Bacharuddin Habibie in 1998, but it took two years and three ministers before her union was recognised.

"Just as in the Suharto era, there is now a growing trend among politicians and bureaucrats trying to justify anti-labour policies by giving greater priority to foreign investors and so-called industrial peace," Ms Sari said earlier this year.

Cheap labour provided the bedrock of Indonesia's economic growth under Suharto and bore the brunt when the economic crisis came. But little has changed and employers are still able to sack hundreds of workers who merely want more pay. But Ms Megawati will no doubt intrude into Ms Sari's life as the Government's overriding goal of economic progress takes hold. But no matter how long it takes for Ms Sari to achieve her goals, she is determine to carry on leading the fight.