Soeharto

Indonesia’s President Suharto, who steered the vast Southeast Asian archipelago from chaos in the late 1960s to stability and growing economic confidence, has in the past few months faced a rare challenge to his long rule. The turmoil pitted the security forces of Suharto’s tough New Order against a rising tide of disaffected youth and democratic activists, spurred by dissatisfaction over the slow pace of political change and widening economic inequality.

Suharto claims he alone can hold together this fractious island nation whose people have little in common save their Dutch colonial past. Indonesia is indeed diverse: its people speak 300 languages and dialects; its land spans more than 13,000 islands strewn along the Equator, covering a distance of roughly 3,000 miles; its people practice many religions, with Islam the dominant faith. (Ninety percent of the population is Muslim). In his 1989 autobiography Pak Harto, Suharto portrays himself as the only figure who can deliver prosperity and stave off the twin specters of Communist subversion and Islamic extremism. Without him, he claims, Indonesia could run amok again.

Known as the "Javanese King" to some Indonesians, Suharto was returned unopposed as president for a sixth five-year term in March 1993 by the People’s Consultative Assembly, of which a majority are not elected. But his health has become a key issue in recent years. Rumors that he is ill regularly surface, sending financial markets into a frenzy. Suharto said after his nomination in 1993 he did not want to be president for life. In May, he said he would serve out his current term that ends in 1988 but sidestepped a question about whether he would seek re-election.

But resentment against his rule smoldered this year after the government successfully backed moves to oust the leader of the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s founder Sukarno. Riots erupted in Jakarta in July after police evicted Megawati supporters from the PDI headquarters in the city, but the government has since firmly clamped down on dissent. Although, analysts say the riots were the culmination of public anger against socioeconomic inequality even though political turmoil was the probable source. Opponents argue that Suharto’s success in bringing economic wealth has increased the gap between the rich and poor, contributing to much tension underlying the facade of stability. Suharto’s six children, accused of obtaining wealth through their father’s influence, have been the focal point of anger. Close army associates of Suharto are also among the wealthiest people in the country, and critics say that nepotism and cronyism have characterized his rule.

The Colonial Past

The president was the second son among 11 children whose father was a minor official in the village of Kemusu. His parents divorced and Suharto was scuttled among relatives. In late 1942, he signed up for the Indonesian Army which the Japanese created during their occupation. To the young soldier, who failed in his attempt to be a bank clerk during Dutch colonial rule, Tokyo’s propaganda announcing Japan was coming to free Indonesia from its colonial masters offered a way out.

Japanese occupation was indeed Suharto’s rite of passage. the Japanese trained him as a soldier, awakened his nationalism, and instilled a world view: The Japanese vision of Dai Nippon (Greater Japan) was translated by Suharto and his revolutionary generation into Indonesia Raya (Great Indonesia). Discipline, order, ruthlessness, and progress were the attributes Suharto admired in the Japanese and embraced for himself. But the liberators soon became brutal occupiers. By 1945, Suharto was among the troops who rebelled against their Japanese master, and when the war ended and the Dutch returned to reclaim their colony, he fought with Indonesian guerillas against the Dutch. After independence, Suharto stayed in the army, rising steadily in the ranks.

In 1963, as Indonesia edged toward economic and political disaster under Sukarno, Suharto took over command of the strategic reserve forces based in Jakarta. By this time, the military was riddles with factions as Aukarno’s uneasy coalition of the armed forces, the Communist Party, and Islamic parties began to crumble. Sukarno clung to power by aligning himself with the powerful Communist Party, provoking a tense standoff between the Communists and the army.

Tension exploded into violence on October 1, 1965, when a small group of soldiers arrived at the Jakarta homes of seven senior generals. Three generals were killed immediately, one escaped, and the rest were kidnapped. After the botched coup, Suharto, then a senior general, led a counter-coup and then a military takeover. The chaos of the coup attempt was followed by a six-month anti-Communist terror. According to some accounts of that period, at least 500,000 people died. Many were jailed and Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI) was outlawed.

Shrewd Maneuvering

Over the last 25 years, Suharto has indeed refined repression to a point where few people need disappear and torture need only be applied selectively. Bodies no longer fill rivers as they did in 1965 and 1966, though for a period between 1983 and 1985, hundreds of bodies were discovered in the countryside, and the President explained that those killed were criminals and "the corpses were left lying around as a form of shock therapy." There are far fewer political prisoners now. Human rights groups estimate there are approximately 300 political prisoners today, mostly from separatist outbursts in Irian Jaya, continuing resistance in East Timor and sporadic revivals of Islamic extremism in Sumatra. Pancasila, Suharto’s state ideology, has been effective in silencing Islam as a political force. Once the Communists were eliminated - often with Muslim groups enlisted by the army to carry out the killings - the New Order determined that Islamic fundamentalism or calls for an Islamic state were a threat. Of late, however, there have been signs that Suharto is seeking to curry favor with Islamic groups.

Suharto, the master politician, has always made economic development a holy mission. Under the influence of his advisers, including economist Widjoyo Nitisastro, Suharto subscribes to the belief that economic growth begets distribution of wealth - eventually. The paramount goal is growth. When the price of oil, the mainstay of Indonesia’s export earnings, collapsed in the mid-1980s, Widjoyo had convinced Suharto that the economy had to be revamped. The prescription: mimic Asia’s little dragons, such as South Korea and Taiwan, by stressing manufacturing and export-driven growth.

As a result, the economy has taken off. Foreign investment is soaring. The reforms have spawned a fancier range of pet projects - petrochemical plants, telecommunications contracts, toll roads - to dispense as governmental favors.

Suharto brought a large degree of unity to the multi-ethnic nation through shrewd political maneuvering and suppression of internal threats to stability. He has steered Indonesia on a balanced course of economic development, making it self-sufficient in rice and enforcing programs for birth control and poverty eradication. Economic policy has been entrusted largely to U.S. trained technocrats, who have introduced wide-ranging reforms, including opening up the financial sector and forging an industrial base. Run away inflation of the 1960s has been kept to less than 10 percent a year, and OPEC-member Indonesia has never missed repayments on a foreign debt now approaching $100 billion.

But Suharto’s government has violated human rights against domestic political opponents and in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony annexed by Jakarta in 1976 a year after it invaded the territory. He used the army to tame the country’s turbulent political development and sideline opponents. Islam, the country’s dominant religion, has also been kept in check, and Muslim extremists have been dealt with harshly. By the early 1990s, however, Suharto began to make overtures to the Muslim population, such as a highly publicized pilgrimage to Mecca. Such events as the downfall of the Philippines’ Marcos and the prosecution of South Korea’s former president Chun Doo Hwan are likely to remind Suharto that the public will not tolerate repression, even in the face of economic growth. as 1998 approaches, Suharto faces enormous pressure to address the pace of political reform.