------Original Message------
To: Obrolan Bandar
Sent: Jan 29, 2008 12:50
Subject: OOT Re: Suharto's Legacy
------Original Message------
From: Dadi Budiana
To: Lili
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Jan 29, 2008 09:29
Subject: Suharto's Legacy
Ini dari Wall Street Journal. Tapi Hugo Restall is an editor di Far Eastern
Economic Review, a journal that probably knows Asia best among all other
news publications.
COMMENTARY
Suharto's Legacy
By HUGO RESTALL
January 28, 2008; Page A14
Will history treat Suharto kindly? Many of his countrymen today do not.
Last year, students protested in Jakarta over the government's decision
not to prosecute him for corruption, even as the former Indonesian
president lay on his sickbed. Abroad, too, it is fashionable to sneer.
Many mention him in the same breath as Mobutu Sese Seko, another officer
turned strongman, who plundered Zaire from the mid-1960s to the late
1990s. Suharto is accused of similar avarice, and vastly inflated
estimates of his family fortune are blithely tossed around.
But the pendulum of condemnation has swung too far, and Suharto's death
yesterday should be the impetus for a reappraisal. The positive
contributions of the man who made Indonesia a respected member of the
international community deserve at least equal emphasis.
Consider that when Gen. Suharto came to power after a failed communist
coup in 1965, Indonesia was an economic basket case and a troublemaker in
the region. The pro-communist populism of President for Life Sukarno had
led the country down a dead end. Think of Sukarno as the Hugo Chavez of
his era.
When Suharto stepped forward from the shadows amid the chaotic aftermath
of a still-mysterious coup attempt in 1965, the little that was known
about him did not suggest he would pursue more sophisticated policies. He
was the son of a poor Javanese rice farmer, a career officer who spoke
almost no English and had made only one short trip abroad. But President
Suharto had something the egomaniacal Sukarno lacked: halus, a quality of
calmness and refinement that Indonesians associate with royalty.
Instead of seeking to be a leader of the Third World, Suharto invested in
his own people. He used the income from oil exports to dramatically
improve health and primary education, especially for girls. Women's
participation in the workforce grew. Life expectancy increased to over 70.
According to one account, the honor he took the most pride in was an award
for developing agriculture.
Suharto initially entrusted economic policy to a group of neoclassical
economists who became known as the "Berkeley mafia," since many were
trained at the University of California. He had met some of them at the
army staff college in the early 1960s. Much like Augusto Pinochet's
"Chicago boys" in Chile, they set fundamental policies of welcoming
foreign investment and trade that sustained growth even when their
influence waned and corruption grew.
Meanwhile, Indonesia became an ally of the free world and a force for
peace in the region. Then Foreign Minister Adam Malik was instrumental in
the 1967 founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was
a bulwark against the spread of communism. Its role gradually expanded to
promoting trade and stability, and Indonesia remains the indispensable
core of the group.
Suharto's biggest flaw was a virtue that he carried too far: loyalty to
old friends and family. Unfortunately, as the nation became richer, some
used their influence to pursue personal agendas that hurt the president
and the country. By the 1990s, the ruling Golkar Party had become a cult
of personality and a nascent civil society was nipped in the bud. The May
1997 elections were marred by violence as Suharto scrapped succession
plans and sought a seventh five-year term in office.
But by the mid-1990s Indonesia was also booming, and it seemed like only a
matter of years before, like the tiger economies of East Asia, it would
become a developed country. With investment flooding in and growth rates
high, Indonesia appeared ready for economic liberalization. Yet regulatory
institutions didn't keep up. A flood of new banks opened, but behind the
scenes they were being used as private funding vehicles for their tycoon
owners. Many businesses borrowed abroad in U.S. dollars. When the 1997
Asian financial crisis hit and confidence evaporated, this rickety
financial structure came tumbling down.
Ironically, had Suharto stepped down just a couple years earlier, his
image as modernizer would be intact. Instead he has even been blamed for
the ills brought on by the incompetence of his first three successors, Mr.
Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri. Today, after nearly
a decade of political floundering, the country is once again on the rise
under the leadership of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It's no surprise that
his policies resemble those of the early Suharto years.
Suharto was guilty of hubris when he styled himself Bapak Pembangunan
Indonesia, or father of Indonesia's development, and even had this title
printed along with his portrait on the 50,000 rupiah note. But that is a
pretty accurate summary of his legacy. Like Deng Xiaoping, he rescued his
country from totalitarianism and poverty, and put it on the path to
prosperity and a large measure of personal freedoms. For all his flaws,
Suharto deserves to be remembered as one of Asia's greatest leaders.
Mr. Restall is the editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review and a member
of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.
Write to Hugo Restall at [EMAIL PROTECTED] And for more incisive and
provocative commentary from Asia's thought leaders, go to The FEER Forum2.
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