The day which could go down in history as the beginning of the end for President Suharto started with an all-too-familiar confrontation between students and soldiers in Jakarta. It ended when a prostudent former general climbed on to a tank outside the Indonesian parliament and read a proclamation to a delirious crowd calling for Gen Suharto's resignation - a scene reminiscent of the occasion Boris Yeltsin faced down a coup outside the Russian parliament.
Most incredible for Indonesians was the fact that student representatives from several universities were allowed near the parliament building at all after months of having their protest campaign confined, sometimes violently, to their campuses. The night before, intensive negotiations between students and the military aimed at avoiding a street demonstration which might provoke large-scale rioting had taken place and the result was a deal: the students could carry their campaign for political reform to parliament, so long as they travelled there in buses.
They set out at 9.30 a.m. from the medical campus of the University of Indonesia in a convoy of battered green coaches, led by a 1954 black Mercedes with running boards which once belonged to Mr Suharto and now carried the university dean. Horns blaring they passed through diplomatic suburbs with Marine PT 76 light tanks guarding the crossroads, and raced through the centre of town where passers-by waved from the pavements.
At one point two Scorpion tanks made by the British firm Alvis accelerated alongside the convoy, dripping water from their tail pipes, their drivers giving thumbsup to the students. But at the gates of Parliament a line of heavily-armed soldiers only grudgingly allowed the 2,500 students through the gates in small groups. These were the notorious green berets from a regiment loyal to Gen Suharto's son-in-law.
A student handed one soldier a red rose as a sign of peace but he took it disdainfully, glanced at his stony-faced comrades, then tossed it behind him. Inside the grounds the students staged a sit-down, chanting slogans such as "Hang Suharto!" while their leaders joined a meeting of parliament members, most of them long-time Suharto loyalists.
The parliamentarians were shocked by what they heard. "Suharto must go - the sooner the better," said Mr Amien Rais, head of a 28 million-strong Islamic group, pointing at a portrait of the 76-year-old president. Other influential Indonesians there supporting the students included a former Suharto development minister and confidant for 16 years who, when writing his name for a reporter, added in English, "freedom-fighter".
Crammed in behind the wooden benches of the committee room wearing pro-reform badges were a former governor of Jakarta, a former energy minister, a former general secretary of OPEC, a prominent Catholic leader, and 15 retired generals, including Brig Gen Hariadi Dharfawan (59). He said people had the right to demand a special session of the 1,000-member Consultative Assembly to replace Gen Suharto.
"After more than 30 years power corrupts," he told me. As assembly members were handpicked by Gen Suharto, I asked if they could be trusted to turn against him. "It's just a list of names," he replied with a wave of his slim, perfumed cigarette. "We'll just change the list." The parliamentarians were given a document calling for Gen Suharto's resignation on the grounds that he had turned against the people.
As the meeting continued a line of four tanks and three trucks rumbled through the ornamental gardens behind the parliament building. Two hundred soldiers leaped down, and jogged into position between the students sitting outside and the main parliament building. Half of them lined the top of a wide stone staircase: the others, who wore bullet-proof vests, lined up in front of the students. They carried rifles, tear-gas canisters, and bamboo sticks.
The students, dressed in blazers of blue, orange and other colours to denote their universities, greeted them with a barrage of taunts, at one point chorusing in English, "Fuck Suharto!". The soldiers grew edgy. At one point they cocked their rifles in a menacing fashion. But the moment passed. Like it or not, they had an agreement with the students, who had promised to leave when they had made their point.
At three o'clock a convoy of 30 coaches, led by eight army buses, arrived to take the demonstrators back to their universities. They clambered aboard and left, waving Indonesian flags from the roof and windows. They were in good humour because by then word had come out that the parliamentarians had reacted sympathetically to their demands.
By the gates 100 of the stillsurly green berets lined up in box formation to see them off. Several students from Atma Jaya university campus, the last to leave, walked over and forced the soldiers to shake hands with them. Here one of the most symbolic scenes of an extraordinary day took place when the last students had gone.
Retired Gen Ibrahim Sali came hurrying from the parliament building with important news. Before the soldiers quite realised what he was doing, Gen Sali, an informal leader of the protest movement, climbed up on a tank guarding the entrance to deliver it to the crowd of onlookers and street traders still congregated outside the gate. Reading from a piece of paper, he informed them that the speaker of parliament, the third most important politician in the land, had called for Gen Suharto to step down. Everyone cheered. But the expression on the face of the pro-Suharto soldiers did not change.