Seth Mydans, Jakarta – It was not a threat, said Wardah Hafidz, one of Indonesia's toughest social activists; it was a simple statement of the country's new balance of power.

"You can meet with 40 of us in your office," she told officials of a government agency she was publicly accusing of misuse of funds, "or you can have 4,000 of us in the street outside."

The agency, known as Bappenas, the national planning agency, chose the private meeting. Also under pressure from Ms. Wardah, the World Bank delayed a disbursement of welfare funds through Bappenas, saying, "The level of leakage this year has been too much."

Ms. Wardah, a slight and surprisingly shy-looking woman in her 40s, said, "This is the first time Bappenas has been challenged by the people to be publicly accountable. Before, they were way up in the clouds. Corruption, bad planning – whatever they wanted to do, they just did it. Under Suharto, it was a completely top-down system."

For better or worse, life was a lot simpler before President Suharto was forced to resign a year ago by a surge of public anger, after having just about everything his own way for 32 years.

Now it is not quite clear in which direction power flows. Government ministers, fearing an angry reaction, quickly shuffle backward, smiling and gesturing defensively, when people like Ms. Wardah advance on them.

Ms. Wardah leads an independent group called the Urban Poor Consortium, one of hundreds of nongovernmental organizations, called NGOs for short, that have suddenly begun flexing their muscles now that the dictator is gone.

They are pushing agendas that include human rights, environmental protection, workers' protection, legal aid and political freedoms as well as rights for the poor.

They are one building block of a new civil society that also includes a noisy, take-no-prisoners free press; an always unsatisfied, always demanding student movement, and a suddenly liberated array of political parties that may not have clear programs but are in no doubt that they want a share of the political spoils.

All these groups are part of a transformation of Indonesia that is not quite a revolution. It is a banging, jostling realignment of the traffic patterns of power, like a fairground arena of bumper cars.

For lack of a better word, this process is known as "reformasi," or reform. For the moment its chief characteristic is that the people above now have to listen to what the people below are saying.

"It's a complete change in terms of political participation and political awareness," Ms. Wardah said. "That means that for us, for all the NGOs, it is a crucial moment to develop and become stronger."

In one of the most remarkable displays of this shifting power, another group, Indonesian Corruption Watch, forced the suspension this month of Attorney General Andi Ghalib by publicizing information that indicated he was involved in large-scale corruption.

Ghalib was forced to step aside when it was revealed that businessmen he was investigating on corruption charges had made huge donations to the Indonesian Wrestling Foundation, of which he is honorary chairman. "It's wonderful to see, isn't it, how these freedoms are actually working," a Western diplomat said.

Even the men with guns – the police officers and the army – have become cautious in the face of this newly empowered public. "Now the police say, 'OK, you're having a rally. We'll be there but we won't harass people,"' Ms. Wardah said.

"During Suharto's time, mass numbers of people were one thing they were always afraid of and they never allowed," she said. "Now the masses of people are in the open and those above are nervous about it. They have no choice. They have to listen."

But the power struggle is not yet over. What Indonesians call the forces of status quo are still fighting back against the forces of reform. And it is possible that once a new government emerges from the election that was held this month, new pressures will be brought against independent groups like Ms. Wardah's.

"They are on the defensive," she said of the powers that be. "Unfortunately, although they are on the defensive they are very strong."

They tried their old tactics against her recently, hauling her into a police station when she helped organize a demonstration by workers who had lost their jobs at a biscuit factory. "They said, 'OK, let's start the interrogation,' and I said, 'No. Not without my lawyer,' and they said, 'OK,"' Ms. Wardah recalled. "In Suharto's time they would torture you and force you to agree with their version."

Soon the police station was crowded with about 20 lawyers, she said, and after only one night in custody, she was released without charges.

Suharto allowed the formation of nongovernmental interest groups like hers, but he kept them under tight control – "quarantined in seminars, workshops and hotel meeting rooms," as Ms. Wardah put it.

"We felt like we were doing lots of things, but really it was just among us," she said. "We could not get our views published. We couldn't speak up. We couldn't criticize. Nothing seeped down to the grass roots. Nothing really happened. We called it turbulence in a glass."

But all this activity served an important role in at least voicing a poltical agenda, said Emmy Hafil, who heads Walhi, Indonesia's leading environmental group. In the absence of real opposition parties, organizations like hers became a de facto opposition.

When Suharto resigned and the political parties began to assert themselves, Ms. Hafil said, she initially felt sidelined and abandoned in this new, broad "democratic space."

"I thought, 'Oh my God, we are going to be lost somewhere,"' she said. "I felt that the political leaders had taken over our roles, when in fact we had been performing their roles. So we had to adjust ourselves."

As both sides – top and bottom – adjust to Indonesia's new patterns of power, Ms. Wardah said, there is a danger of misjudgments and conflict.

"I think we have reached the point of no return – we can't go back to the old practices," she said. "That's where the danger lies, if they don't realize that the context has changed, that the rules of the game have changed. If they try to resort to the guns and the money again, there may be high tension and perhaps violence."