Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar – The tragic events of July 27, 1996, were instrumental in Megawati Sukarnoputri's path to the Indonesian presidency. With the release of official results from the July 5 elections on Monday showing her in second place, Megawati hopes that the events of this seventh-anniversary week will pave the way to her re-election. But this year's proceedings simply outline how far Megawati has strayed from her imposed heroism in the waning days of former president Suharto's reign.

Back in 1996, Suharto decided to replace Megawati as the head of the Indonesian Democratic Party (known by its Indonesian initials, PDI), one of the two political parties officially sanctioned to oppose the ruling Golkar Party. It should have been a simple matter to get Megawati to resign, but Suharto had recently lost his wife Tien, whose skills in Javanese mystical arts were widely thought to have aided Suharto's rise from obscure colonel to virtual monarch and guided his reign. With Ibu Tien gone, Suharto began a string of political misjudgments that culminated in his downfall.

Rather than quietly easing out Megawati, Suharto chose to do it publicly. Even for a self-effacing housewife with no previous political ambitions – but a rich knowledge of Javanese mythology in which power seeks worthy princesses, rather than the other way around – the loss of face was too much for Megawati to accept. Moreover, her ouster, which came in June of that year, provided a rallying point for opponents of Suharto. After more than three decades in power with increasing corruption and nepotism, the no-longer-New Order had no shortage of opponents in search of an excuse to express their dissatisfaction.

This energized opposition movement centered on PDI headquarters in Jakarta, where Megawati and her supporters were occupying the complex in defiance of Suharto's new PDI leadership. On July 27, the military under General Sutiyoso attacked the headquarters to eject the occupiers. Megawati was not present, but hundreds of her supporters were. The attack left five dead, 23 still categorized as missing, and 149 more injured.

Megawati's ladder

The July 27 incident became a further, blood-stained unifier for opponents of Suharto, catapulting Megawati to national stature as a symbol of opposition to a regime that had reiterated its nakedly oppressive side by attacking unarmed foes over a purely political matter.

In the 1999 legislative elections, the first fair and open vote in more than 40 years, Megawati's party – renamed the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) – was the leading light for reformasi (reform) and received the largest slice of the vote, eventually taking her to the office from which Suharto had ejected her father Sukarno. It's fair from a historical point of view to say that Megawati climbed into Merdeka Palace on the pile of PDI casualties from July 27, 1996.

Once she reached the presidency, however, Megawati seemed to forget that those stepping stones weren't mere rocks but the bodies of her supporters who paid for her rise with their flesh and blood. Since that day, her administration has been no more receptive to calls for an independent investigation of the July 27 incident than the Suharto regime was. And she hasn't just cohabited with many elements of the New Order power structure, she has positively embraced them.

Political power play

One of the few instances in which Megawati has chosen to expend political capital in public involved last year's vote by Jakarta's city council for the region's governor. The Golkar Party incumbent was thoroughly reviled for his alleged corruption and proven incompetence, and PDI-P city council members had the votes to elect the governor of their choice. However, Megawati personally intervened to insist that her party faithful re-elect the incompetent – er, incumbent. She threatened to expel party councilors who disobeyed the order and followed through against the handful that did.

This blatant political deal was presumed to be part of a pact relating to this year's voting. But in April's election for national and local legislators, Golkar and PDI-P polled miserably in Jakarta. The Prosperous Justice Party, with Islamic roots and an anti-corruption, reform platform that once won votes for Megawati, took control of the Jakarta city council.

The name of the Jakarta governor who benefited from Megawati's rare show of bare-knuckled political muscle? Sutiyoso, the general who led the attack on PDI headquarters on July 27, 1996.

Unhappy anniversary

The seventh anniversary this week of the July 27 incident also marks a key moment for Megawati's re-election fortunes. Monday's release of official results from the July 5 presidential election undoubtedly confirm that Megawati took second place in the voting and will now move on to face former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a September 20 presidential runoff. Megawati took about 26% of the vote in round one, bettering PDI-P's 19% in the April legislative vote. Yudhoyono collected just over a third of the vote, about the same total that PDI-P won in 1999.

This week Megawati's party is widely expected to announce an election alliance with Golkar, Suharto's ruling party, whose presidential candidate, former General Wiranto, finished third in the July race. Over the past three years, Megawati's government has veered away from any semblance of its reformist roots to become just another player among the political elite that treats public office as an opportunity for enrichment rather than an obligation to serve. An alliance with Golkar isn't an alarming departure for PDI-P so much as it's a sad confirmation of a long-standing state of affairs, as if a disloyal spouse has decided to stop sneaking out for assignations and instead has moved his lover into the spare bedroom.

"PDI-P supporters are already disappointed with the party leadership and Megawati," political commentator Andi Mallarangeng says. "But they understand that to get Megawati re-elected, they have to make this deal. The question is whether it's going to be sufficient to get her re-elected, whether Golkar supporters will follow the leadership at the grassroots."

Commemorating the July 27 anniversary through an alliance with Golkar may not succeed in making Megawati president a second time, but it has succeeded, once and for all, in determining the status of the 1996 PDI headquarters' victims: Megawati's actions have converted them from heroic martyrs into mere fools.