Gen Wiranto, who is both Minister of Defence and head of the armed forces in Indonesia, asked the Indonesian cabinet on Monday to agree to the imposition of martial law to restore order in East Timor. The ministers declined. So, too, did the House of Representatives.
Many objected that as the military was part of the problem in East Timor, more military power was not the answer. So Gen Wiranto simply told President Habibie that he should invoke a rarely used 1959 law which allows the head of state to declare a state of emergency.
According to the Jakarta media, the President signed Decree No 107 and martial law went into effect at midnight on Tuesday. In this way the East Timor crisis has exposed the true structure of authority in Indonesia.
As the Jakarta Post put it in an angry editorial, the imposition of martial law "corroborates the bitter reality that real power in this country lies in the hands of the Indonesian military (TNI), not the President, his cabinet or the House of Representatives". The effect of martial law is that the military, with its 24-year record of human rights abuses in East Timor, is now legally empowered to do whatever it wants there. In the first two days of martial law the military has done nothing to stem the violence of the pro-Jakarta militias.
The military seizure of total power, according to a Western military expert in Jakarta, lends weight to the theory that the events of the past week were planned all along by the army, and that the declaration of martial law is the culmination of a coup d'etat, with the purpose of preventing East Timorese inheriting their own country.
The political leadership in Jakarta denies this. The Foreign Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, said yesterday that military violence was the work of "rogue" elements.
A sanitised version of events from army sources is that thousands of locally-recruited East Timorese police and soldiers simply mutinied under local direction and almost brought about a collapse in the army command structure.
But the evidence that the violence was institutionalised is much stronger. The sudden appearance of several groups of young men with berets, mass-produced T-shirts and M-16 rifles capable of co-ordinating their activities and manning round-the-clock road blocks suggested professional organisation.
The army officers most closely involved in directing militia activity were in fact all senior officers from the Kopassus special forces command whose top brass received special training in Australia and the United States.
In particular military observers name the Army Assistant for Operations, Maj Gen Kiki Syahnakri, and the Army Assistant for Security, Maj Gen Zacky Anwar Makarim, a former head of military intelligence and reputed specialist in "black operations" in East Timor and Aceh with a prior record of creating armed and ruthless allies for Indonesia by building on deep tribal and ideological differences. To the dismay of some diplomats in Jakarta, Gen Wiranto yesterday put Maj Gen Syanakhri in overall command of East Timor.
Both these officers were in Dili on April 17th on what was described as a "working visit" when the militias were first unleashed on the East Timor capital. On that occasion they killed up to 20 people in the home of Mr Manuel Carascalao, whose pleas for protection were turned down by the commander of the 164th Provincial Military Command (East Timor), Col Tono Suratman, who was entertaining the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, in his villa a few blocks away at the time. Maj Gen Syahnakri and Maj Gen Anwar returned with Gen Wiranto to Dili on April 21st on a "peace mission".
Following dinner they met prointegration militia leaders including the Combat Commander, Mr Joao da Silva Tavares, Mr Joanico da Costa (commander of the Saka group), Mr Sera Malik (commander of the Sera group) and Mr Eurico Guterres (commander of the Aitarak group).
When the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) was set up in June, Maj Gen Anwar was appointed military liaison officer with the UN.
But his close association with the militias' escalating terror in August became quickly obvious. Diplomats in Jakarta who follow military affairs believe he has now gone back. "He has been in charge of the plan for the last year," said one Western expert, "and he'll see it through."
The presence in East Timor this year of another senior officer associated with army dirty tricks provides more evidence of the close involvement of the top command in everything that went on there.
Maj Gen Sjafrie Samsudin, currently on Gen Wiranto's staff, was accused last year by the government-appointed National Comm ission on Human Rights of involvement in racial (anti-Chinese) riots in Jakarta last year, along with the notorious Lieut Gen Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the former president, Gen Suharto.
He commanded the Jakarta military district on the black day in May when rioting (in which some military officers took part, as has been conceded publicly by Gen Wiranto) caused over 1,000 deaths.
This year Lieut Gen Samsudin turned up again in the province of Aceh where the army has been engaged in a brutal crackdown on independence sympathisers. He was then transferred to East Timor, where his responsibility is believed to have been the organisation of the pro-Jakarta militias. In East Timor he worked under the command of Maj Gen Anwar.
"Several serious questions arise," said a Jakarta-based diplomat. "To whom do these officers owe their loyalty? Is it to Wiranto? Are they maybe more powerful than Wiranto?" The other big question is what the aim of the plan was. One answer was given to Mr Andrews in a very revealing remark by the pro-Jakarta and militia supporter, Governor Soares, in Dili on April 17th. He would fight for integration if the vote went for independence, with the aim of partit ioning East Timor so that the western half remained part of Indonesia, he said.