Vaudine England, Jakarta – A growing sense of unreality has taken root in Indonesia's presidential contest in the wake of President Bacharuddin Habibie's speech.

A well-connected source said senior military advisers to opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri and military intelligence personnel had held meetings on Thursday to allow, if not provoke, wider unrest that would help create a political shake-out. "And then those men and her men started to jump into the field," said a source.

One theory is that armed forces chief General Wiranto, now put forward as Mr Habibie's running mate, is anxious to depart from the President's script and is not averse to the rumoured arrival in Jakarta of tens of thousands of agitators from around Java.

Recent history has shown that engineered unrest cannot always be controlled by the forces that set it in train. If this next week provides more apparent flashbacks to the killing of students in May last year which triggered riots that brought down ex-president Suharto, the risks to a peaceful transition of power are great.

Meanwhile, the presidential contest remains unresolved. There is no precedent for the rejection of a president's accountability speech and so no firm rules for what impact this would have on Mr Habibie's re-election bid.

Mr Habibie is a stubborn politician who is reputedly ready to buy support. He is more adept at the numbers game than his main opponent Ms Megawati, giving him still a chance of victory. But such a win would not resolve Indonesia's political transition, only prolong it with greater risks of unrest.

"No one knows who's going to be president," said a senior observer at parliament who spoke to several deputies. "Some ambassadors had their cars stopped, stones thrown at them, and were asked by youths which country they were from – presumably looking for Australians," said one Western diplomat who attended Mr Habibie's speech in the heavily guarded parliament.

In a startling break with tradition, the President was interrupted both before and during his speech by the leader of Ms Megawati's faction in parliament, Ir Sutjipto, who decried the violence of the students outside.

People's Consultative Assembly chairman Amien Rais made a point of inviting some students into the assembly hall. He interrupted Mr Habibie to say so.