Susan Sim, Jakarta – As strategies go, there is a certain sick brilliance in the targeting choices of whoever is behind the bombing campaign being waged here.

Take the Jakarta Stock Exchange Building. It houses not just the bourse and major stock companies – in other words the very fat cats whose selfish market speculation helped keep the economy in the emergency ward – but also the World Bank, an institution which only on Monday threatened to cut the external aid lifeline if Indonesia did not bring order in some remote part of the country, namely West Timor.

Would anyone here weep if these denizens were forced to scurry into the streets and have their fancy cars destroyed in huge balls of fire? Of course, no one of consequence should die, or there will be hell to pay.

Or take the bomb explosion outside the home of the Philippines Ambassador six weeks earlier, mere houses away from the Vice-President's official residence. It was an attack on what one presidential aide calls "the street of complacency", the property lots of the local moneyed class, whose huge pseudo-Georgian mansions most ordinary Indonesians enter only through the servant's entrance.

But why the Philippine envoy? Two words: plausible deniability. With Abu Sayyaf terrorists already holding the world in thrall with their hostage-taking saga in Jolo, the Indonesian government would not be able to resist the temptation to blame them too. And continue its lethargic investigative approach, leaving the real saboteurs more room to continue honing their peculiar expertise.

With the JSX bomb explosion, the saboteurs are now making clear they are the only terrorists in town; the signature on that car bomb appears to be similar to the one which injured the Filipino envoy, the Indonesian police now has no choice but to acknowledge.

Some senior officials would go further to concede publicly what everyone here has assumed from the beginning, that rogue military elements are conducting a campaign of terror.

Note Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman's latest remarks: "I think there are elements connected to the military establishment who make these incidents possible, rogue elements of course. Those bombings could only have been executed by experts."

And the instant reference to the shadowy hand of Suharto supporters, a by-now accepted codeword for retired generals with more slush funds than most regional military command budgets: "There is a perception that anytime the government raises the pressure on Mr Suharto or any of his cronies, then these things happen in Jakarta or in the regions."

Their alleged involvement is frightening even the police, hence the lethargy. Of course, there is also much institutional rivalry between the police as the new guardians of order, and the army, whose top brass know that if internal security can be maintained without their involvement, then retribution for their past iron glove approach will not be far off.

For today's reformist generals, even if they have not much love for Mr Suharto, there is a free rider benefit for them from the terror campaign.

Sooner or later, the civilian government, under pressure from the rich who do not like the prospect of being blown up, will be forced to invite them to partake of internal security enforcement again, if mainly to cleanse its own ranks.

And here the brains behind the terror campaign show their slickness: by targeting the symbols of fat-cat capitalism, they invite no populist backlash from the people. True, the victims have largely been members of the underclass – drivers, street vendors, security guards – but the numbers are too small to arouse much outcry.

And in a curious way, the Abdurrahman government seems to be tapping into this public nonchalance, displaying a remarkable lack of urgency in dealing with the bombings beyond the standard "we will take all measures to enhance security" statements.

Their insouciance is somewhat incredulous in face of universal expectations, elsewhere, which demands that a government takes seriously any terrorist attack on its stock exchange. What other tests can one devise for government leadership other than its management of a crisis?

But of course, it has to be able to recognise a crisis first. Failure to do so creates suspicion that it lives in some alternate political universe not quite accessible to the rest of the world, where investors too reside.