As midnight fell in Solo a few hours after the parades ended, the darker side of Indonesia's perilous future reasserted itself. As they had for several weeks, scores of youngsters staged late-night motorbike races up and down the main streets. Only by firing warning shots into the air did security forces prevent the mob from burning down the newly opened Matahari store. We are vulnerable to unrest. Indonesian people have been in chains for 30 years and now everyone wants to shout.
Nobody is in control, nobody obeys the authorities.
People don't care whether what they do disturbs other people. Even the traffic has become more chaotic. Things used to be controlled from the top down. People never learned to impose their own internal controls. Nobody knows the limits anymore.