Jakarta – So who benefited from Tuesday's Yogyakarta meeting of the Big Four? Birthday boy Sultan Hamengkubuwono certainly did, catapulting himself onto centre stage as a unifier heads above the squabbling politicians, the man who might just have saved a presidency and so be a suitable alternative.
The unglamorous truth is, of course, that no one went to the lunch meeting with any expectation of solving Indonesia's myriad problems, or even to present a united front long enough for a group photograph.
Like the huge bomb that went off in the capital just as the Sultan began serving nasi tumpeng to his guests in Java's cultural centre, Tuesday's meeting created a lot of boom, but was somewhat off the mark.
People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Amien Rais, not the best of friends with the Sultan, a former neighbour, used his invite to show Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri that he would like to be nicer to her. "I'll go only if Mega agrees to go," he had told all and sundry, underscoring his new-found respect for her and estrangement from the man he did put on the throne, President Abdurrahman Wahid.
Ms Megawati went to Yogyakarta because it would have been hard to reject a personal invitation from the Sultan. His father, the illustrious Sultan Hamengkubuwono the Ninth, was a close friend of her father, founding President Sukarno.
Her early departure from the lunch to visit Mr Sukarno's grave site in Blitar, followed soon after by Dr Amien, showed they both attached "no high value to the meeting", noted an insider.
Parliament Speaker Akbar Tandjung was not part of the original Ciganjur Four which met in October 1998 to pit themselves as reformers against the government of Dr B.J. Habibie and Golkar.
Always ambivalent about Mr Abdurrahman, he had in recent weeks allowed himself to be goaded by the President's supporters – who have been trying to get legislators to mount one corruption probe after another against him – to talk about pulling Golkar out of the National Unity Cabinet.
But his threat to take Golkar into the opposition has backfired, serving mainly to remind the other parties that it was, after all, Mr Suharto's political vehicle for 30 long years.
A chance to associate himself with the key figures of the reform movement was thus not to be taken too lightly. Ever the West Sumatran outsider, he does understand that Javanese politics is largely about consensus building, or at least the pretence of compromise.
Gus Dur himself told at least one close aide before the meeting that he expected nothing from the Yogyakarta meeting. Then, an aide asked: "Why go and give the quietly ambitious Sultan a national stage to pose as someone who can get the leaders together when no one else could?"
"Nothing wrong with that. Who do you think is smarter?" he countered. "Whatever the Sultan's motives, he is the king of Java and due respect has to be shown." Concluded the aide: "This is Indonesian basa basi at its best." Basa basi is Indonesian for idle chat.
Still, in a country tired of politicians bashing each other and bombs going off in the streets, any show put up by their leaders is "psychologically constructive", as one Cabinet minister put it.
But do not expect the niceties of basa basi to reign when the MPR begins its session on Monday. If the President stills shows no signs of offering the major parties some concessions in terms of power-sharing, then Tuesday's Yogyakarta meeting might well be the last time all four national leaders and the king sit down to lunch together.