B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta – The recent exchange of words between former president B. J. Habibie and retired General Prabowo Subianto gives us more political entertainment in a country already full of stage entertainers.

Did or didn't Prabowo plan to stage a coup? And did or didn't he berate Habibie by saying, "What kind of president are you? You're naive", as is written in Habibie's newly published memoirs, Detik-detik yang Menentukan (Crucial Seconds). Of course, the reverse should equally be asked: "Is Habibie telling the truth?"

The witnesses, however, are somewhere out there, and, as always, they will remain silent. This is how tragedy after tragedy in this country quietly slip into the folder of history. Tomorrow's headlines may give us a new sense of urgency, but in fact they merely serve to conceal reality.

For the supporters of Prabowo, Habibie may look like a laboratory-sterilized engineer with a naive sense of reality. For the supporters of Habibie, however, the charge of his naivete precisely proves that Habibie innocently told the real story. Between the two quarreling camps are ordinary citizens who are amused, but amused in a sour and poignant manner.

I was in Jakarta during the May 1998 tragedy, to-ing and fro-ing as a curious citizen and a humanitarian volunteer between various locations that were ablaze in flames. As an ordinary citizen ignorant of the fierce power struggle that was then in full swing, I shivered at witnessing the forms of violence taking place in those days. Even more so when I heard that the same pattern of violence had descended upon other big cities. No, it was not the type of violence perpetrated spontaneously, nor were the rampages and looting committed spontaneously. It was mayhem bordering on pogrom, plain and clear.

To seek solace from my own helplessness, I began to pay close attention to the events and patterns documented by some friends both in and off the field. The overall pattern was very odd indeed, and the course of events revealed a curious pattern of violence that could hardly be said to be random.

First, it was absolutely odd for violence on such a colossal scale and magnitude to have broken out simultaneously. For such violence to have taken place all over Greater Jakarta is unusual enough, let alone for the mass violence to have occurred simultaneously in other cities.

The term "simultaneous" is the key. It refers to the occurrence of violence on a colossal scale and magnitude at the same time and in real time. In short, it has the appearance of randomness, and randomness is the child of spontaneity – something is spontaneous in the sense that it is not engineered.

But, how can we reconcile the appearance of randomness and the colossal scale and magnitude of the violence? The one is the foe to the other. In the world of human behavior, an entirely new random phenomenon can hardly arise and occur on a colossal scale. An entirely new random human act can only arise or occur as the result of either a prolonged social habit or of a specific work of social engineering.

Since the nature, as well as the scale and magnitude, of the May 1998 violence cannot be conceived as a manifestation of our long and historically deep-seated social habits – otherwise Indonesia would be a nation of barbarians – we are led to speculate that the May 1998 mayhem was not the outcome of spontaneity but rather of political engineering.

Second, it is utterly absurd to conceive the May 1998 tragedy as being the result of random and spontaneous acts. This time the ground is not logic but the course of events. It is instructive to note that the instigators of the burning, looting, killing and other forms of violence in the May 1998 mayhem were neither persons from the local communities nor people familiar to the locals.

These outsiders were the ones who seemed to have instigated the violence. And once the violence was started, they incited the crowds of spectators to join in. It was at this point that things started to look like they must have been initiated by locals.

Once the course of events appeared this way, the instigators fled. What was left then was a colossal scene of violent mayhem. So, there was no mystery; only the obscuring of reality. Of course, all this was then overshadowed by the unfolding events of the power struggle that eventually brought down Soeharto.

Third, it is totally absurd to suggest that the orgies of violence in May 1998 were left completely unmonitored by the military intelligence and secret services, whose vast surveillance networks were so effectively used during the preceding thirty-two years of dictatorship.

Only ordinary people like me could not have foreseen the violent monsters that were about to descend onto the streets of Jakarta and other cities. Let's do a simple exercise in logic. If a highly clandestine movement by a few activists was easily monitored by military intelligence, how can we account for the fact that systematic violence on such a colossal scale and magnitude like that in May 1998 was totally off the radar screen of the same mighty intelligence services?

Indeed, this uncharacteristic anomaly is something that begs an explanation. As things stand, we are really at a loss. No one is likely to stand up and answer all the above questions, if only because it would involve releasing some notorious skeletons from our collective cupboards.

What we are left with is the persistent reemergence of the specter of May 1998 tragedy.

Further exchanges of words following those between an ex-president and an ex-general should be greeted skeptically – will they do anything to solve the great puzzle surrounding the events of May 1998.

Let a hundred memoirs be written and published; let unscrupulous politicians manufacture their own versions for image making. The most vital safeguard with which we need to equip ourselves is a skeptical questioning of the extent to which these stories help reveal the systematic way in which the May 1998 mayhem was ruthlessly engineered.

[The writer is a lecturer in the Postgraduate Program at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta.]