Suharto's bloody human legacy, and his surprising political one Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, January 21, 2008 The stories of very many nation-builders are irreconcilable records of magnificent victories and great crimes. This is abundantly true of Indonesia's former dictator president Suharto, 85, whose life, at the time of writing, is being sustained by machines. During his 32 years in power, Suharto was responsible for some of the worst genocides and mass abuses of human rights in the latter half of the 20th century. He also oversaw one of the most corrupt regimes of all time. Transparency International estimates that he embezzled up to $35 billion US, more money than any other leader in history. But it is also true that he forged the Indonesian archipelago of over 13,000 islands, home to peoples speaking more than 200 languages, into a nation. It is a nation which, to the surprise of many, has survived Suharto's resignation and passing from the political scene in 1998. It was widely feared then that political upheaval would cause national dismemberment. Despite all predictions -- and sometimes logic -- Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim county with more than 200 million people, increasingly seems an island of political and social stability among the 10 countries of Southeast Asia. That is the heritage of Suharto, who like many Indonesians has only one name. But it came at a heavy price in blood and fear. He was born into what appears to have been a semi-dysfunctional family of Javanese peasants in 1921 at the time of Dutch colonial rule. Suharto's way out was to join the Dutch colonial forces, but in a nimble shift of loyalties which was to be a hallmark of his rise to power, he deserted to the invading Japanese in 1940. And on the defeat of the Japanese in 1945 Suharto joined a right- wing faction of the forces of the Indonesian National Revolution preparing to resist the return of the Dutch. Although Indonesian independence was declared in 1945, the Dutch did return and five years of guerrilla warfare followed. Indonesian independence was finally entrenched in 1950 with a left-wing nationalist leader, Sukarno, emerging as president. Sukarno, with communist backing and expansionist objectives, alarmed Indonesia's neighbours and the United States. With the tacit backing of Washington and Australia in the mid-1960s, Suharto, now an army general leading the elite "Kostrad" strategic reserve, began undermining Sukarno's rule. When left-wing officers murdered right-wing colleagues in 1965, Suharto acted. Communist parties and ethnic Chinese were made targets and, by some estimates, up to a million people were killed. Suharto took political leadership in 1966 and instituted a "New Order" that saw the military share power and administrative responsibilities with civilian politicians. His anti-communist stance, ostensible privatization of state-owned industries, and openness to foreign investment endeared Suharto to Washington, which supported him with aid and turned a blind eye when Indonesian forces invaded East Timor on the departure of the Portuguese colonial regime in 1975. One of Suharto's early acts as president was to end Indonesia's image as an expansionist regional threat. In 1967 he joined the new organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and made Indonesia a cornerstone of regional integration and cooperation. But Indonesia's heavily managed political system -- it cannot be called a democracy in any real sense -- created a culture of bribery, fraud and embezzlement. Much of the proceeds of these rackets ended up in Suharto family bank accounts as foreign investors found it essential for success to have one of Suharto's many children or his cronies on the payroll. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Indonesia vied with Nigeria for the title of the world's most corrupt country. This did not provide an agile or responsive economy when the Asian economic crisis struck in 1997. Suharto had already faced several years of street agitation from increasing numbers of Indonesians unhappy with a guided democracy that amounted to dictatorship. This demand for reform even spawned demonstrations and protests against Suharto on the streets of Vancouver when this city played host to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the fall of 1997. Agitation in Indonesia exploded into street violence as the economy plummeted in early 1998. Suharto went through the bizarre formality of getting himself re- elected president for the sixth time in March that year, but even his own hand-crafted Golkar party was beginning to desert him, and on May 21, 1998, Suharto resigned. Since then, Suharto has staved off attempts to bring him to justice and slowly slipped towards death. But Indonesia, in spite of many challenges, has begun to prosper both economically and politically. Sun International Affairs Columnist [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html? id=06215ff4-26d6-432d-8e9d-fbc0696617c2 Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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