Louise Williams – These are terrible times, a taxi driver says openly. "Suharto is all right, but his greedy children are destroying this country." A domestic helper punches her fist in the air and declares her wish to march in a "huge demonstration" against the "father of Indonesia". A poor construction worker, now unemployed because of the economic crisis, asks how to get to the demonstration: he wants to go and shout at the father from the Parliament gates.

"What can I do? I am just an orang kecil (small person)." This is the usual Indonesian expression of helplessness and you hear it everywhere: on the teeming streets of Jakarta, in the humid corridors of the traditional markets, and in the flat paddies of drought-stricken Java.

The issue being discussed is always injustice: the gulf between the elite and the residents of Indonesia's shanties; working conditions in factories; the forest fires that choked millions for months last year; the small, debilitating demands for bribes for every bureaucratic piece of paper required in daily life.

Under Indonesian "democracy", the Government cannot be voted out of power, the military cannot be challenged because they hold the guns, and President Suharto enjoys a status way beyond that of ordinary politicians. But the division between the orang besar, or big people, and ordinary Indonesians is both real and psychological and has existed for centuries.

Behind the country's modernisation, Javanese mysticism remains strong. People believe in the pulung: the supernatural strength of a leader that allows him to emerge above all others, because that is his fate. Thus, President Suharto has become something of a modern Javanese king. For those who do not believe in the pulung there is the law. Nearly any criticism of President Suharto, or any attempt to organise opposition to his regime, risks incurring the charge of sedition, with death as the maximum penalty.

"We are suffering from the 'Muhammad Ali syndrome'," said the political commentator Arief Budiman before the economic crisis hit. "People have long believed that they have lost the fight (against the President), even before they have got into the ring."

But in the past few weeks ordinary Indonesians have made a quantum leap in their willingness to criticise and challenge, says one Western diplomat. The same orang kecil are burning down government buildings and throwing rocks at the troops of President Suharto's regime.

Now Javanese mysticism is being used to explain what is happening. The pulung can be lost. For those who believe in its strength, there are signs of its failure. The recent disasters that have struck Indonesia - ethnic riots, earthquakes, fires, droughts, plane crashes and now economic meltdown - may be omens of chaos to come, caused by people who wanted to cheat the natural order and take too much for themselves.

Not only have President Suharto's political opponents broken the taboo of silence and publicly called on him to step down, so too have many well-respected former members of his Government.

Every ordinary Indonesian knows where the power lies. Now they are willing to point the finger. "Look at that toll road, look at those cars, look at this packet of clove cigarettes, look at that luxury hotel, they are all owned by the President's children," said one driver.

Still, the political system remains closed and those shouting for change are on the outside of the gates. Newspapers have already been reprimanded for publicising scenes of panic buying last week, and the desire of the pro-democracy leader Megawati Sukarnoputri to challenge President Suharto for the national leadership.

Without a free press, information about what is happening within the closed political elite and the military leadership remains a series of rumors. When the President fell ill last month he was rumored to have died, suffered a stroke or suffered severe diarrhoea after a visit to a filthy rice market.

Another rumor has it that a caretaker government waits in the wings; another concerns a plan for Indonesia to declare a debt moratorium. The jittery stock and money markets which decide the economic fortunes of this nation, have been trading on the strongest rumor of the day.

Can the new resolve to speak against the Government be translated into real political change? The New Order Government is built on a political system in which all sectors of society are included under one umbrella organisation - the ruling Golkar group. There is no political opposition, nor do critics have the right to organise against the status quo because, theoretically, all Indonesians are under the protection of the umbrella.

So, it is not yet possible to compare Indonesia to the Philippines in 1986, when President Ferdinand Marcos triggered a revolution by allowing Cory Aquino to stand against him in elections then rigged the vote.

Even if the Indonesian people choose Ms Megawati as their figurehead to oppose the regime, the only course they can take is public demonstrations, which the military have pledged to quash.

Still, many observers now say that frustrations run so deep that violence is inevitable. Petty grievances, competition for the dwindling number of jobs and increasingly expensive food supplies are on the rise.

There is no evidence that President Suharto believes the pulung is failing him. He has ruled out a public dialogue with critics and promised only economic, not political, reforms. His Government has warned that those who hoard food in these frightening times may be charged with sedition.

And then there is the ultimate conspiracy theory of Indonesian politics. It goes like this: a man who has played off his enemies against each other with such skill in the past cannot simply be standing by and watching his country slide. Surely he is playing weak so that his enemies will stand up in the trenches and be shot down?

The theory is not implausible. If President Suharto can turn the economy around and maintain his leadership, he is unlikely to tolerate the critics who have used this strange time to make their views public.