Susan Sim – The People's Consultative Assembly session in August will be a breakpoint for the major political parties, who will also have to work out an inter-party relationship based on some national platform.

"We need to conceptualise the new politics," Golkar deputy chief Marzuki Darusman told The Straits Times. "We just can't continue with this bandwagon process where everybody is on board."

But because there is a sort of elite aversion to radical change, equating that with mass violence, Gus Dur's government would probably be allowed to limp on till 2004 "with the rest of us holding things together".

How long though are the disgruntled prepared to wait? The savvy politicians like Mr Arifin are probably hoping to rev up the "Impeach Gus Dur" momentum by talking up a bandwagon effect.

The President on his part is hoping to give himself a fillip by getting some of the fabled Suharto billions back. Success on that score, however remote, could go far in reinstating his battered image as the resistance hero who battled Mr Suharto to his knees and gave his money back to the people. Otherwise, the likelihood is that more will start believing he has succumbed to the syndrome of "Petruk dadi ratu" – the peasant becomes king – and is out only to gorge on the riches of state.