Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta – The row over former president Habibie's allegations about an aborted military coup on the second day of his short term is overshadowing a more interesting revelation from his memoir: the events surrounding the collapse of the New Order regime on May 21, 1998.

Habibie may not say it directly in his book Detik-Detik yang Menentukan (Crucial Seconds), but it is clear that Soeharto's carefully laid out post-retirement plan was bungled because Habibie, then his deputy, gave the president the "wrong" answer when told about Soeharto's plan to step down the night before.

According to the book, Habibie's first reaction to the news was, that going by the Constitution, he would have to succeed Soeharto. He could have responded by also offering to resign – because the pair were "elected" by the People's Consultative Assembly on the same ticket three months earlier. But he did not.

Soeharto, according to the book, was not pleased with the response from a man he had carefully chosen to be his running mate three months earlier. The president abruptly ended their discussion and the two men have never spoken since. Soeharto's contempt was so deep that "he treated me as if I never existed," Habibie writes in the memoir.

The next day, Soeharto announced to the nation he was quitting the presidency. The succession took place then and there at the presidential palace, with Habibie being sworn-in by the Supreme Court chief justice to become Indonesia's third president.

Habibie never found out what Soeharto's retirement plan was, and since Soeharto has never revealed it publicly, people can only speculate.

But people have long known that in the hours before his resignation, Soeharto transferred almost all his executive powers to Gen. Wiranto, the chief of the armed forces. The transfer was apparently contained in a letter styled on the infamous March 11, 1966, letter supposedly given by president Sukarno to Gen. Soeharto.

Wiranto has since bragged that he could have seized power then and there with the full mandate from the legitimate president, but being the "constitutional" person that he is, restrained and allowed Habibie to become the new president.

Between Habibie and Wiranto, it seems clear Soeharto would have preferred the latter as his successor. Why else would he have transferred so many powers to the general?

Since Soeharto had not planned on this early retirement – he had just been reelected to serve until 2003 – neither person, least of all Habibie, had been chosen or groomed as his heir-apparent.

Wiranto's loyalty was never in doubt. Seconds after the short resignation ceremony, he took the microphone and announced to the nation that he would personally protect the safety and the dignity of the former president and his family.

But the real reason why Wiranto did not make his move to grab power, we now learn, was because Habibie had pre-empted him by giving the "wrong" answer to what was effectively a two-option multiple choice question from Soeharto.

In response to Soeharto's statement "I am going to step down tomorrow", Habibie could have answered either A: "So, I'm going to be the next president?" or B: "I had better step down with you, Pak". He picked A.

Had the German-trained aerospace engineer answered B, then he would have paved the way for a military takeover with Wiranto in charge, but with Soeharto no doubt continuing to pull the strings.

Post-Soeharto Indonesia would have taken a greatly different historical path.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on where one stands, Habibie was not well-versed in Javanese tradition, where courtesans are expected to know, or at least guess, the correct response to a king's questions from his body language.

Regardless of the veracity of Habibie's allegations of a planned military coup the day after he assumed power, one thing is for certain, the military was confused by the unexpected turn of events.

Without Soeharto, who had been doing all the thinking for the military for 30 years or more, the generals were simply lost. There was certainly a massive deployment of the Army's Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) under its chief, Lt. Gen. Prabowo, then a powerful figure because he was Soeharto's son-in-law.

Habibie triggered the current controversy when he suggested the deployment around the presidential palace where he resided was an act of intimidation on the part of Prabowo to influence his decisions, which he described as amounting to an attempted power grab.

At that time, Habibie was still picking his Cabinet and those he wanted to lead the military.

Prabowo and Wiranto, whom Habibie quotes as sources of information about the Kostrad deployment, are now entangled with Habibie in very public mudslinging, with allegations and counter allegations flying. As fascinating as it is to follow, the argument matters little to the nation. Its purpose is only to clear the names of the players who may have been besmirched by Habibie's revelations.

The Kostrad deployment is but a minor episode in the bigger story of how Soeharto's final scheme to control the direction of this country was botched.

All thanks to the naivete of one man who was supposed to have had the brains to read the mind of a Javanese king. Habibie guessed wrong. And the rest, as they say, is history.