Not exchange chief Mas Achmad Daniri, though - he was desperately trying to get back in.
At the time of the blast, Daniri was attending a stockbrokers’ association meeting next door. He immediately ran outside and saw smoke billowing from his headquarters. Security staff had cordoned off the area, so Daniri directed operations from the sidewalk. “Black smoke was pouring out of the building, and I couldn’t get closer than about 400 meters,” he says. “I used my mobile phone to give instructions to my staff from across the street.”
The 47-year-old Daniri quickly set up a crisis center in a nearby building. One of his first priorities was to protect the bourse’s computer system and data. When he finally got back to headquarters that evening, he was relieved to find virtually no damage to the fourth-floor exchange. Trading was suspended for two days, however, because most of the building remained closed.
Daniri became a director of the Jakarta bourse in 1991 and took the helm in April 1999. Since then Indonesia has lurched from one political crisis to another. The explosion - one of several to rock the capital in recent months - coincided with the trial of former president Suharto. (His son was ordered arrested in connection with the stock exchange bombing; he turned himself in but was not charged.) Daniri remains unfazed by the violence, convinced that the bourse will play a crucial role in recapitalizing debt-laden Indonesian companies and privatizing state-owned ones. He admits his hair “has become whiter and whiter” recently but says that “we have to be hanging in there in a very tough situation. I still believe the future will be better.”
