President Suharto - who left Indonesia this weekend on a business-as-usual trip to Egypt - will be gone for good within six months or a year. This is the belief of Mr Helmy Fauzi, who was born in 1968 as Gen Suharto's "New Order" rule began.
A human rights lawyer with a sense of history, Mr Fauzi said in Dublin: "There is no way Suharto can control the situation now." In an "unprecedented crisis", protesting students are being joined by workers; even conservative Muslims are calling for reforms; the until now pro-regime middle classes are queuing for food for the first time in their lives; ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs are starting to pack their bags - and the quasi-political military is uneasy.
He sees a comparison with Ferdinand Marcos of the neighbouring Philippines, who was given shelter by the United States in 1986 after his flight. To avoid another unfortunate comparison - with Nicolae Ceausescu - Mr Fauzi is calling for the Irish Government to facilitate a refuge in the EU for the Suhartos, who "have run the country as a family business". The "depth of anger among Indonesia's 200 million people is so great that acts of violence - even summary execution" - cannot be ruled out, he said.
Mr Fauzi works with the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI), which the aid agency Trocaire helps to fund. He is also calling on Ireland to support a demand for any EU aid to Indonesia to be conditional on human rights concessions. "The government is using this crisis as a pretence to crush the prodemocracy movement," he says, adding that there is "an urgent need" for international human rights monitors.
Gen Suharto, who himself used students to gain power, knows that "the students are the conscience of the nation . . . Most of the post-war Indonesian freedom fighters were student activists".
Mr Fauzi says a generation after the cocktail of workers, students and intellectuals posed a threat to the status quo in Europe, the Indonesian cauldron today has an extra ingredient: the outside world. "For the first time the international community has strong leverage in Indonesia."
And add to that the absence of Cold War strategic reasons for supporting a pro-western hater of communism, especially as China moves towards the market.
The international community has realised since the onset of the rupiah currency crisis last July that, contrary to its image, Indonesia has a "high cost, inefficient economy". It is costing the International Monetary Fund $42 billion to bail it out. "The main cause of inefficiency is the monopoly on all major sectors of the economy which are controlled by the Suharto family."
So was the IMF assisting in a project to tell Suharto that his time is up? Mr Fauzi said the IMF programme, which last week produced a 71 per cent fuel price increase, was mainly economic. But it was conceived out of a realisation that business cannot be done without the rule of law, he said. "Americans don't understand this ethic of sneaking around - `co-operate with me in return for so many shares' . . . "
In the current Krismon, an acronym for "monetary crisis", capital flight would be serious for Indonesia's vast mining, oil and gas industries.
But the news last week that the ethnic Chinese are starting to take their capital out of the country is "the beginning of the end" for the regime, says Mr Fauzi. Gen Suharto has promoted this group as an engine of growth but his military has lately used the Chinese as a scapegoat for the crisis, cultivating "social jealousy".
A push against Gen Suharto by the Indonesian military would not be accepted by the international community, Mr Fauzi said. "A transition with a military junta would only reflect that Indonesia is not yet a stable country." The road to stability lies in calling a special session of the Indonesian parliament to elect a new president, "according to the people's aspirations".
The main opposition challenger would be the leader of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals, which, ironically, was set up in 1990 to co-opt Muslim support for the regime. Dr Amien Rais, who challenged Suharto for the presidency earlier this year, also opposes Indonesia's occupation of East Timor as "anti-Islamic" and supports self-determination for the former Portuguese colony.
Mr Fauzi places hope for change in Dr Rais's assertion that if Gen Suharto doesn't stop the rot within six months he will call for a "people's power" movement, reminiscent of that which toppled Marcos.