The clashes were fuelled by anger over a law that would weaken the country’s anti-graft agency and planned revisions to the criminal code that would compromise the rights of women and minorities.

On Friday, as Widodo promised to get to the bottom of the deaths, the president said in Jakarta: “I told the national police chief that his personnel should not act repressively.”

The protests are seen as a test for Widodo, who is set to be inaugurated for his second term on October 20.

Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, earlier said he planned to meet with student representatives but did not end up doing so on Friday.

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Civil society alliance activist Emily Lawsen, 26, who represents the Jakarta Feminist Discussion Group, said she saw police fire multiple rounds of tear gas within a radius of 3km at rallies before water cannons were used.

“Jokowi has failed to fulfil his promises to us,” Lawsen said. “If he is really pro-democracy, people should not be dying and getting arrested for speaking up for our rights.”

Analysts say the week of protests, which have resulted in at least 265 student and 39 police injuries, place the president in a position where he has to balance the conservative elite which supported the legislative changes with the escalating civil unrest across the country spawned as a reaction.

The parliament’s 560 lawmakers appear in a rush to pass the bills before the end of their term this month, but earlier this week were forced to postpone deliberations.

A new 575-seat house of legislators elected in the April polls are scheduled to be sworn in next month, but it remains to be seen if they will revise or scrap the contentious bills.

The criminal code revisions are favoured by conservatives and hardline Islamist groups in the Muslim-majority nation. A coalition of groups, including the Islamic Defenders Front, have said they will amass in Jakarta on Saturday for a rally to “save Indonesia”.

Analysts said they were disappointed by the passage of new legislation on the KPK, one of the country’s most respected institutions that has gone after politicians and businesspeople in a bid to weed out endemic graft.

Under the new law, the KPK would lose some of its independence, including the authority to wiretap public officials suspected of corruption.

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Jokowi, who came to power vowing to implement further reforms to boost Indonesia’s economy in his second term, on Thursday said he was considering revoking the bill.

But even if the previous set of regulations were restored, the anti-graft body would be weakened, said analyst Kevin O’Rourke.

He suggested Widodo’s policymaking was “taking cues from China”.

“Like China, Widodo’s Indonesia will no longer allow for a genuinely independent institution to focus scrutiny on patronage-style practices,” he said.

Timothy Chang, director of Hong Kong property development firm Kingland’s operations in Jakarta, said the Indonesian central bank’s move to cut interest rates this month had provided “good momentum” for chasing economic growth.

“It would be a great waste of effort if such momentum is discounted because of political speculation,” said Chang, who helps connect Chinese and Indonesian businesses.

He added that he believed the economy would pick up once Jokowi was sworn in.

Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow in the Indonesia Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the legal changes suggested elite interests in parliament and government were aligned, given that no one in the cabinet had spoken up against the bills.

“The elites’ first priority ... is weakening the KPK, then if they cater to the Islamist interests by revising the criminal code, in return the Islamists would support the president in revising the mining and [land] laws,” he said. “The students see this clearly.”

In Indonesia’s eastern province of Papua, thousands of scared residents scrambled to board military planes on Friday as they also fled urban unrest.

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Some 700 Wamena residents – mostly migrants from other parts of the country – were evacuated to elsewhere in Indonesia, the military said. A further 1,500 gathered at a local airport in a bid to leave.

The majority of Papuans are Christian and ethnic Melanesian with few cultural ties to the rest of Indonesia. A low-level separatist insurgency has simmered for decades.

Jakarta’s demonstrations are among Indonesia’s largest since 1998, when on the back of the Asian financial crisis that crippled the economy, thousands of students took to the streets, triggering massive unrest that eventually toppled former dictator Suharto from more than three decades in office.

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Made at ISEAS said this week’s protests showed that despite concerns over the conservative turn that Indonesian society was taking, Indonesians would speak up for reasons beyond religious beliefs.

“This secular kind of protest was unthinkable before. It’s a sign that civil society is sprouting up again in Indonesia.”

O’Rourke said the scenes of mayhem would alter Widodo’s approach and have a positive effect on governance.

“The students are exerting a check on his administration’s impulses and thereby helping protect democratic freedoms,” he said.

Syariva Risa, 18, a second-year political science student at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, said she fully supported the protesters’ seven demands.

“These demands represent various aspects of politics, environment, human rights and corruption that are on the brink of collapse,” she said. “The seven demands urge the government to open its eyes and ears and act in the interest of the people.”

Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse