As you may recall last week, we interpreted sudden moves by Indonesia's bureaucrats to arrest terrorists plaguing Indonesia, after a long period of neglect, as a sign of a very different new president about to take power. Dodge City, to which Jakarta is often compared, was about to get a new sheriff.

In Indonesia, the future reliably can be gauged by watching how its famously lazy bureaucrats scurry, just as a close watch of scurrying cockroaches can foretell an earthquake ahead. And we were right.
 
Newly sworn—in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had his first cabinet meeting Friday and immediately cracked the whip, ordering the arrest of the country's two worst terrorist fugitives responsible for the Bali, Marriott and Australian Embassy bombings in the past two years. Within 100 days. Or else. For good measure, he ordered a corruption cleanup, too, both of which moves are likely to be powerfully popular with Indonesia's citizens, who are fed up with both.
 
This being Indonesia, where everyone, particularly the police, knows what's going on, and in the past have lacked only leadership, there's no question what's going to happen next with a new sheriff in town: the terrorists are about to be rounded up and properly disposed of.
 
—A.M. Mora y Leon    10 24 04