With only three days to go before balloting begins in the country's final round of its first direct presidential elections on Monday, Indonesians can draw little comfort from official assurances that everything is being done to ensure that the situation remains under control. After all, the deadly bomb attack in front of the Australian Embassy in Kuningan one week ago occurred only minutes after the chief of the National Police, Gen. Da'i Bachtiar, assured the House of Representatives that the situation in Jakarta was "safe and under control."

Of course, that statement, made by the man who should know better than anyone else what immediate dangers are threatening the nation, points at some very serious flaws that are encumbering the effective operation of our security and intelligence services. To make matters worse, the police had apparently ignored warnings, issued a week before by the United States and Australian governments, that there were indications that terrorists were planning a major attack in Indonesia in the coming days. A most unfortunate oversight, given that similar neglect probably led to the devastating JW Marriott Hotel bombing in August last year.

At present, almost two years after the double bomb attacks of October 2002 in Bali, police still have not been able to capture two of the most important suspected masterminds of those two bomb attacks, the Malaysian bomb makers Azahari bin Husin and Noordin M. Top. This, admittedly, is not because police have not been making an effort to find the two. In fact, ever since the Bali blasts, police investigators have been close to catching them more than once. Last year, however, the two managed to give police the slip only minutes before officers arrived at their safe house in Bandung. History practically repeated itself earlier this month, days before the Kuningan blast, when police raided a house in West Jakarta the two were believed to have rented, only to find that they had left two days before, leaving traces of chemicals that police believe were used for making last week's bomb.

An unfortunate coincidence? Perhaps. But many observers believe that the breakdown of coordination and the rivalry that has arisen among the various intelligence agencies since the downfall of President Soeharto in 1998 must be held responsible, at least in part, for this failure. The police and military intelligence services appear to be each going their own way, keeping vital information to themselves rather than sharing it with "rival" agencies and with the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).

Even more serious, some observers suspect that some of the intelligence information gathered may have been leaked – in this case, to the terrorist masterminds Azahari and Noordin and their abettors, giving them the opportunity to escape. Given that the two Malaysians have slipped through police cordons at least twice that we know of, this is a possibility that the security authorities would certainly do well to look into.

Whatever the case, a revitalization, if not an overhaul or a reorganization, of the country's security and intelligence services seems strongly indicated. Indonesia cannot afford to allow terrorists to continue to wreak havoc within its borders. At the same time, Indonesians must realize that the fight against terrorists and terrorism cannot be left to the government and the police alone. The public, too, must take an active part in the battle against terrorists by alerting the relevant authorities to any suspicious goings on taking place in their respective communities – of course, without denying individual citizens and residents their right to privacy.