Asia-Pacific Leaders Remember Former Indonesian President Suharto's Strengths as He Passed Away at Age 86.
Asia-Pacific leaders recalled the late Indonesian dictator Suharto's strengths last Sunday, praising him for modernizing his country and promoting regional unity — despite his deeply flawed human rights record.
The U.S. also offered its "sincere condolences" on the death of Suharto, a Cold War ally whose 32 years of brutal rule saw up to a million political opponents killed. Suharto died of multiple organ failure Sunday at age 86.
Suharto was praised for his role in building the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, the 10-country bloc that has increased the region's influence in global politics. "As one of the founding fathers of ASEAN, President Suharto was among those who had the pioneering vision of establishing a more peaceful, progressive and prosperous Southeast Asian region founded on respect and understanding," Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement from Dubai, where she was travelling Sunday.
Arroyo also said Suharto played a key role in helping negotiate a peace pact between the Philippines government and the Moro National Liberation Front, a Muslim rebel group in the volatile southern region of Mindanao. "The Filipino people join me in offering deepest sympathies and condolences on the demise of former President Suharto," Arroyo said.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recalled Suharto as an "influential leader" who presided over the world's fourth most populous country, and its largest Islamic nation, during critical times.
"Until the catastrophic Asian financial crisis of 1997, he oversaw a period of significant economic growth and modernization at a time when Indonesia faced fundamental political, social and economic challenges," Rudd said. "The former president was also a controversial figure in respect of human rights and East Timor and many have disagreed with his approach," he added. More than 180,000 people died in East Timor between 1974 and 1999 during an Indonesian occupation under Suharto.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi paid tribute to Suharto for working to bolster ties between their two countries. "We very much appreciate the good relations that have been spearheaded by Pak Harto," Abdullah said, using a respectful nickname for the late leader. "This relationship has brought many benefits to our two nations."
Susan Stahl, a spokewoman for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, said "We express our sincere condolences on the death of President Suharto. He led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development."
A procession of regional leaders, including several of Suharto's contemporaries, came to visit him after he was hospitalized on Jan. 4. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was going to Jakarta last Sunday evening to pay his final respects to Suharto, the Singapore foreign ministry said. "We are saddened by the news of the passing of former Indonesian President Suharto," the ministry said.
Suharto was vilified as one of the world's most brutal rulers and was accused of overseeing a graft-ridden rule. But some have noted Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era's stability, when fuel and rice were affordable.
Poor health — and continuing corruption, critics charge — kept him from court after he was chased from office by widespread unrest at the peak of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. With its court system paralyzed by corruption, Indonesia has not confronted its bloody past. Some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.
Soldier, Savior, Strongman, Crook
The death of Suharto, architect of Indonesia's authoritarian 'New Order,' draws a muted reaction from the nation he once dominated. He ruled with an iron grip for a generation then spent the last decade of his life dodging prosecution for alleged human-rights crimes and corruption.
Indonesia's reaction to the passing of its longest-ruling president was muted, and paradoxical. During the final weeks of his life, elder statesmen from across the region paraded past Suharto's sickbed to pay their respects. Yet several prominent domestic visitors emerged from Jakarta's Pertamina Hospital to declare that official investigations into alleged extrajudicial killings and ill-gotten family wealth should proceed even after the former strongman's death. From the halls of power to the streets, Indonesians praise today's democratic system without vilifying the leader ousted in a student-led uprising back in 1998. Suharto "made mistakes," said former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who was democratically elected and held the nation's highest office from 1999-2001. "But he also did a great service to the nation."
Suharto loyalists credit him for rescuing the country and, by extension, greater Southeast Asia from chaos in the mid-1960s by establishing what the strident cold warrior himself called a "New Order." Its aim: build a modern, unified, anti-communist Indonesia. Its salient features included political repression of most dissent, discrimination against the country's ethnic Chinese merchant-class, virulent nationalism and a strong military hand in politics. In all, Suharto served seven terms as president and remained Indonesia's supreme leader for more than 32 years before being forced to resign after mass street demonstrations engulfed the capital Jakarta amidst the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Ten years on, democracy has put down such firm roots in Indonesia that the post-Suharto political transition is largely complete. "The real story is that his death will have virtually no political impact," says Douglas Ramage, head of the Asia Foundation in Jakarta. "The country is so dynamic, and has gotten so much right in the past few years, that [Suharto's passing] is being greeted with a collective yawn."
Many Westerners know the backdrop to Suharto's rise from Peter Weir's 1982 film "The Year of Living angerously," a romance between an Aussie journalist and a British diplomat (played by Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, respectively) set in Jakarta in 1965. That year, following an abortive communist uprising, Suharto led a military clique that deposed Indonesia's founding father and left-leaning "President for Life" Sukarno. In the months that followed, soldiers and vigilante groups loyal to the new regime massacred as many as a million communist sympathizers in what Goenawan Mohamad, founding editor of Tempo magazine and opposition figure during Suharto's rule, considers "the greatest violence to have ever occurred in the archipelago."
The ledger on Suharto's reign is long and contentious.
In the positive columns, he held together a fractious empire spanning three time zones, containing more than 17,000 islands and speaking hundreds of languages. He also took measures to ensure that the world's largest Muslim country by population remained secular. One was to promote rapid development with new ports, roadways, mines and manufacturing zones that by 1990 had turned the impoverished nation into a budding "tiger" economy. Until its rotten underpinnings were exposed, Indonesia's growth model was hailed as a blueprint for the rest of the developing world. In 1996, the International Monetary Fund included Indonesia in its list of top 10 emerging economies, lauding its 8 percent annual growth.
Regionally, Suharto's dictatorship removed Indonesia as a potential source of turmoil, allowing vulnerable neighbors Singapore and Malaysia to develop into economic dynamos. His commitment to regional cooperation led to the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "When Indonesia got its act together, the whole region dodged a bullet," says Ramage.
On the negative side, Suharto condoned cronyism on a monumental scale; his relatives amassed a fortune estimated at $15 billion to $35 billion before their patriarch left office. In the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, Indonesia's currency collapsed, its export machine sputtered and the government was forced to accept a humiliating IMF bailout; 10 years later, the scars of that downturn are still fresh. On the political front, Suharto's intolerance of dissent stunted democratic development and fanned sectarian discontent. Under his guidance, the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), or national armed forces, imposed reigns of terror on separatists from Aceh on the northwest tip of Sumatra to the provinces of Papua and West Papua (Indonesia's half of New Guinea) on the Coral Sea.
The bloodiest military actions took place after the TNI invaded East Timor, a small former Portuguese colony with a population of 650,000, in 1975. Indonesia annexed it a year later. During the 24 years Jakarta ruled the territory, according to Amnesty International, some 200,000 Timorese died in fighting or from conflict-related illnesses and starvation. After Suharto's departure, citizens in East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence and, under intense international pressure, the TNI pulled out. A United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping force remains on the ground in independent East Timor, which ranks among the world's poorest nations.
Forecasts that Indonesia would fracture without a strongman at its helm proved wrong. Democracy has flourished despite a series of weak presidents and unstable political parties that coalesce and dissolve around charismatic personalities more than policy positions or ideals. The military is largely out of politics, courts are growing more independent and Indonesia's media is arguably ASEAN's freest. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has won praise for his economic reforms and handling of the 2005 tsunami, including a breakthrough peace deal brokered with rebels in Aceh just months after nearly 200,000 Indonesians perished in the province when the giant waves hit.
Yet democracy remains messy business in Indonesia, and Suharto's passing has evoked tinges of nostalgia. "To be frank, I really regret that he had to step down, and I was among those who wanted him to," says Mahmudin, a motorcycle-taxi driver in Jakarta. "I did not know that life would get harder and it would be more difficult to make living."
In a country of 230 million with one of Asia's highest poverty rates, it's not surprising that, 40 years on, Suharto is best remembered at home and abroad for the economic prosperity and stability he pledged to his people and, for a time, delivered.
Asia-Pacific leaders recalled the late Indonesian dictator Suharto's strengths last Sunday, praising him for modernizing his country and promoting regional unity — despite his deeply flawed human rights record.
The U.S. also offered its "sincere condolences" on the death of Suharto, a Cold War ally whose 32 years of brutal rule saw up to a million political opponents killed. Suharto died of multiple organ failure Sunday at age 86.
Suharto was praised for his role in building the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, the 10-country bloc that has increased the region's influence in global politics. "As one of the founding fathers of ASEAN, President Suharto was among those who had the pioneering vision of establishing a more peaceful, progressive and prosperous Southeast Asian region founded on respect and understanding," Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement from Dubai, where she was travelling Sunday.
Arroyo also said Suharto played a key role in helping negotiate a peace pact between the Philippines government and the Moro National Liberation Front, a Muslim rebel group in the volatile southern region of Mindanao. "The Filipino people join me in offering deepest sympathies and condolences on the demise of former President Suharto," Arroyo said.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recalled Suharto as an "influential leader" who presided over the world's fourth most populous country, and its largest Islamic nation, during critical times.
"Until the catastrophic Asian financial crisis of 1997, he oversaw a period of significant economic growth and modernization at a time when Indonesia faced fundamental political, social and economic challenges," Rudd said. "The former president was also a controversial figure in respect of human rights and East Timor and many have disagreed with his approach," he added. More than 180,000 people died in East Timor between 1974 and 1999 during an Indonesian occupation under Suharto.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi paid tribute to Suharto for working to bolster ties between their two countries. "We very much appreciate the good relations that have been spearheaded by Pak Harto," Abdullah said, using a respectful nickname for the late leader. "This relationship has brought many benefits to our two nations."
Susan Stahl, a spokewoman for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, said "We express our sincere condolences on the death of President Suharto. He led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development."
A procession of regional leaders, including several of Suharto's contemporaries, came to visit him after he was hospitalized on Jan. 4. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was going to Jakarta last Sunday evening to pay his final respects to Suharto, the Singapore foreign ministry said. "We are saddened by the news of the passing of former Indonesian President Suharto," the ministry said.
Suharto was vilified as one of the world's most brutal rulers and was accused of overseeing a graft-ridden rule. But some have noted Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era's stability, when fuel and rice were affordable.
Poor health — and continuing corruption, critics charge — kept him from court after he was chased from office by widespread unrest at the peak of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. With its court system paralyzed by corruption, Indonesia has not confronted its bloody past. Some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.
Soldier, Savior, Strongman, Crook
The death of Suharto, architect of Indonesia's authoritarian 'New Order,' draws a muted reaction from the nation he once dominated. He ruled with an iron grip for a generation then spent the last decade of his life dodging prosecution for alleged human-rights crimes and corruption.
Indonesia's reaction to the passing of its longest-ruling president was muted, and paradoxical. During the final weeks of his life, elder statesmen from across the region paraded past Suharto's sickbed to pay their respects. Yet several prominent domestic visitors emerged from Jakarta's Pertamina Hospital to declare that official investigations into alleged extrajudicial killings and ill-gotten family wealth should proceed even after the former strongman's death. From the halls of power to the streets, Indonesians praise today's democratic system without vilifying the leader ousted in a student-led uprising back in 1998. Suharto "made mistakes," said former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who was democratically elected and held the nation's highest office from 1999-2001. "But he also did a great service to the nation."
Suharto loyalists credit him for rescuing the country and, by extension, greater Southeast Asia from chaos in the mid-1960s by establishing what the strident cold warrior himself called a "New Order." Its aim: build a modern, unified, anti-communist Indonesia. Its salient features included political repression of most dissent, discrimination against the country's ethnic Chinese merchant-class, virulent nationalism and a strong military hand in politics. In all, Suharto served seven terms as president and remained Indonesia's supreme leader for more than 32 years before being forced to resign after mass street demonstrations engulfed the capital Jakarta amidst the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Ten years on, democracy has put down such firm roots in Indonesia that the post-Suharto political transition is largely complete. "The real story is that his death will have virtually no political impact," says Douglas Ramage, head of the Asia Foundation in Jakarta. "The country is so dynamic, and has gotten so much right in the past few years, that [Suharto's passing] is being greeted with a collective yawn."
Many Westerners know the backdrop to Suharto's rise from Peter Weir's 1982 film "The Year of Living angerously," a romance between an Aussie journalist and a British diplomat (played by Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, respectively) set in Jakarta in 1965. That year, following an abortive communist uprising, Suharto led a military clique that deposed Indonesia's founding father and left-leaning "President for Life" Sukarno. In the months that followed, soldiers and vigilante groups loyal to the new regime massacred as many as a million communist sympathizers in what Goenawan Mohamad, founding editor of Tempo magazine and opposition figure during Suharto's rule, considers "the greatest violence to have ever occurred in the archipelago."
The ledger on Suharto's reign is long and contentious.
In the positive columns, he held together a fractious empire spanning three time zones, containing more than 17,000 islands and speaking hundreds of languages. He also took measures to ensure that the world's largest Muslim country by population remained secular. One was to promote rapid development with new ports, roadways, mines and manufacturing zones that by 1990 had turned the impoverished nation into a budding "tiger" economy. Until its rotten underpinnings were exposed, Indonesia's growth model was hailed as a blueprint for the rest of the developing world. In 1996, the International Monetary Fund included Indonesia in its list of top 10 emerging economies, lauding its 8 percent annual growth.
Regionally, Suharto's dictatorship removed Indonesia as a potential source of turmoil, allowing vulnerable neighbors Singapore and Malaysia to develop into economic dynamos. His commitment to regional cooperation led to the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "When Indonesia got its act together, the whole region dodged a bullet," says Ramage.
On the negative side, Suharto condoned cronyism on a monumental scale; his relatives amassed a fortune estimated at $15 billion to $35 billion before their patriarch left office. In the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, Indonesia's currency collapsed, its export machine sputtered and the government was forced to accept a humiliating IMF bailout; 10 years later, the scars of that downturn are still fresh. On the political front, Suharto's intolerance of dissent stunted democratic development and fanned sectarian discontent. Under his guidance, the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), or national armed forces, imposed reigns of terror on separatists from Aceh on the northwest tip of Sumatra to the provinces of Papua and West Papua (Indonesia's half of New Guinea) on the Coral Sea.
The bloodiest military actions took place after the TNI invaded East Timor, a small former Portuguese colony with a population of 650,000, in 1975. Indonesia annexed it a year later. During the 24 years Jakarta ruled the territory, according to Amnesty International, some 200,000 Timorese died in fighting or from conflict-related illnesses and starvation. After Suharto's departure, citizens in East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence and, under intense international pressure, the TNI pulled out. A United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping force remains on the ground in independent East Timor, which ranks among the world's poorest nations.
Forecasts that Indonesia would fracture without a strongman at its helm proved wrong. Democracy has flourished despite a series of weak presidents and unstable political parties that coalesce and dissolve around charismatic personalities more than policy positions or ideals. The military is largely out of politics, courts are growing more independent and Indonesia's media is arguably ASEAN's freest. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has won praise for his economic reforms and handling of the 2005 tsunami, including a breakthrough peace deal brokered with rebels in Aceh just months after nearly 200,000 Indonesians perished in the province when the giant waves hit.
Yet democracy remains messy business in Indonesia, and Suharto's passing has evoked tinges of nostalgia. "To be frank, I really regret that he had to step down, and I was among those who wanted him to," says Mahmudin, a motorcycle-taxi driver in Jakarta. "I did not know that life would get harder and it would be more difficult to make living."
In a country of 230 million with one of Asia's highest poverty rates, it's not surprising that, 40 years on, Suharto is best remembered at home and abroad for the economic prosperity and stability he pledged to his people and, for a time, delivered.
1 comment:
Lets not forget current esteem leader General Yudhoyono has an equally distinguish career in East Timor 1999-2000 and Aceh 2001-2004. But Suharto was especially good on economics - in 1962 he put on a show to help Freeport Sulphur convince John F Kennedy to write the New York Agreement selling West Papua to Indonesia; and after his rise to power the General created vast networks of sweatshop factories and sent the US mining giants to harvest the islands surrounding Java.
No wonder people at Bechtel, Freeport and all the members of the Yale university Order of Skull & Bones are sad to lose such a valuable supporter of their global interests.
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