Mega Power Outage

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her husband, Taufik Kiemas, rang in 2003 in style. They celebrated New Year's Eve at the presidential palace in Bali, where Megawati crooned Indonesian classics from the 1970s. Earlier that same day, they had celebrated Taufik's birthday and launched his book Without the People Leadership Means Nothing at the five-star Grand Bali Beach Hotel.

But the party didn't last. The next day the government enacted aggressive price hikes on fuel, electricity and phone tariffs, partially rolling back decades-old subsidies that had cost the government billions of dollars each year. The response? Two weeks...