Still living dangerously

摘要

It was cheeky, but not entirely frivolous. As delegates from neighbouring countries arrived in the Indonesian resort of Bali last autumn for a conference which the country's newly elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, was due to address, a government official teasingly asked a group from Malaysia: "So you have come to see what we can teach you about democracy?" Indonesia may indeed be on the way to becoming the world's third-biggest democratic country after India and the United States. But it is not there yet.