Suharto

President of Indonesia (1968-1998)

• Born: June 8, 1921
• Birthplace: Kemusu, Argamulja, Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)
• Died: January 27, 2008
• Place of death: Jakarta, Indonesia

Suharto was one of the world’s longest serving heads of state. His authoritarian anticommunist regime moved Indonesia into rapid industrial and agricultural change, but massive corruption led to economic empires for Suharto’s family and associates. Rapidly accelerating protests against the Suharto regime, particularly after the Asian financial crisis of 1997, led to Suharto’s removal from power.

Early Life

Suharto (sew-HAHR-toh) was born into a poor farming family in Kemusu village in central Java in the Dutch East Indies. After graduating from local schools, Suharto worked for a short time as a bank clerk and as a common laborer. At the age of nineteen he joined the Dutch colonial army. By December, 1941, he was accepted into a Dutch-run military academy. Within a week, the Japanese entered World War II and soon invaded Indonesia; the Dutch could only surrender. With the changeover of power, Suharto opportunistically joined the occupation police force. By 1943 he rose to the rank of battalion commander in the Japanese trained militia.

Following Japan’s defeat in World War II and the return of Indonesia to Dutch control, Suharto joined Indonesian forces fighting for independence. By the time of independence in 1949, he had risen to the rank of commander. In his rise through the ranks over the next fifteen years under the so-called Guided Democracy rule of President Sukarno (Indonesia’s former resistance leader and its first president), Suharto earned a reputation for his iron-handed suppression of dissidents. He was chosen to command the army’s strategic forces, a sizeable elite force stationed in Jakarta that was maintained to handle national emergencies.

Life’s Work

Suharto’s moment of opportunity came on September 30, 1965, when an alleged procommunist military coup was quashed. Six generals who shared Suharto’s rightist sentiments were killed in the coup, conveniently leaving few rivals to challenge Suharto’s control of the military. His position as supreme military commander was formalized on October 16. What followed was a bloodbath of reprisals aimed at communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese, and any other person Suharto considered potentially troublesome. At least 500,000 Indonesians were killed. In addition, the army was purged of all potential dissidents.

In ill health, President Sukarno transferred power to General Suharto on March 11, 1966. Exactly one year later Suharto was appointed by the house of assembly as acting president. The following day Suharto announced his so-called New Order program to replace Sukarno’s Guided Democracy. The New Order banned the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Community Party of Indonesia) and labor unions, and the press faced strict censorship. Within a short time 200,000 dissidents were arrested. In 1968, and every five years thereafter, Suharto stood unopposed for election to the presidency by the house of assembly.

The new anticommunist Suharto regime was a welcome development for the United States, which was reaching the high point of its involvement in the Vietnam War. Large development loans were secured for Indonesia from the World Bank, an estimated 70 percent of which were actually used for development. The remainder fed an extensive network of corruption. In 1974 the economy boomed as world oil prices skyrocketed. By the 1980’s stable authoritarian control over labor and foreign investments gave rise to manufacture of textiles, clothing, and footwear. By 1985, Indonesia achieved rice self-sufficiency and was no longer dependant on imports for that important grain.

Hundreds of companies were formed to handle new business concerns, but Suharto, his six children, and a small number of entrepreneurs tied to his family had controlling interests in the companies. His family and cohorts (concerns) also acted as middlemen for purchasing most government imports and for arranging export sales of such major commodities as oil, petrochemicals, and lumber. Internally, Suharto controlled monopolies of major commodities such as flour, cement, tobacco, and timber. The best real estate for building and industrial development remained in family control. For foreigners and Indonesians alike, the price of doing business in Indonesia included making large contributions to the hundreds of “charities” that provided slush funds for Suharto. Moreover, Suharto concerns paid back to the government little or no taxes. By the time of his fall from power in 1998, the leader of the fifth most populous nation in the world had become the world’s sixth richest person, and each of his six children controlled a financial empire of their own.

By a strange turn of events, Suharto concerns obtained over 40 percent of prime land in East Timor. In 1974, as Portugal was preparing to leave East Timor as its colonizing power, an indigenous nationalist movement began to form as well. The Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) took control. In response, the Indonesian army invaded East Timor and established a puppet government that requested immediate absorption into Indonesia. The ensuing conflict led to the deaths of 200,000 people, about one-third of East Timor’s population.

In the summer of 1997, the soaring economies of the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plummeted. Economic panic caused bank and corporate failures, the stoppage of construction projects, inflation, and massive unemployment. By January, 1998, price riots broke out throughout Jakarta, with violent attacks against the city’s wealthy ethnic Chinese residents and businesses associated with the Suharto family. Student protests aimed at overturning the corrupt Suharto regime grew in size and gained outside support from more tradition-oriented Muslim organizations. Protests were met by repression by an army and police that were used to restricting dissent. Public rage grew after April 8, after Suharto announced steep cuts in government subsidies of fuel and food in order to secure an International Monetary Fund loan.

On May 12, riot police opened fire on student protesters at Jakarta’s Trisakti University, leaving six dead. The action created martyrs and led to an increase in the number and intensity of demonstrations. Rioters over the next three days torched automobiles, shopping malls, and other buildings, and wrecked the Chinatown section of north Jakarta. In the end, several hundred people lost their lives, and there was an estimated one billion dollars in property damage. Suharto’s promise on May 15 to restore fuel subsidies was too little, too late.

Protests came to a head on May 18 as a huge crowd gathered outside the parliament building. Military units and riot police helplessly stood by. Thousands of students entered the parliament building to begin a sit-in. They demanded Suharto’s immediate resignation. What they received the following day was a promise by Suharto (who had been reelected by parliament for a five-year term in 1998) to hold early elections and to not run again for the presidency. Suharto’s offer was immediately rejected by the demonstrators.

Resignation pressures were tightened on May 20, when the speaker of the house, Haji Harmoko, delivered a letter to Suharto, demanding that he resign or face impeachment proceedings within two days. Bowing to the inevitable, Suharto resigned from the presidency on May 21. Eleven of Suharto’s cabinet ministers also resigned, and power automatically transferred to the vice president, B. J. Habibie, an intimate political and business associate.

In late May, 2000, Suharto was placed under house arrest, and investigations began into financial corruption by Suharto and concerns. By July he was charged with embezzling $571 million from U.S. donations to his charitable foundations. Court-appointed doctors declared him medically unfit to stand trial because he had suffered a series of strokes, had heart problems, and had intestinal bleeding. If found fit to stand trial by Indonesia’s attorney general, Suharto would have faced charges for human-rights violations in addition to those of corruption. His death on January 27, 2008, in Jakarta was preceded by years of ill health.

Significance

Suharto’s legacy is mixed. His New Order economic policy was based on foreign investments and development of oil and timber resources. In addition to economic successes, Suharto made Indonesia into a model of reduced birthrates: The six children per woman birthrate in 1965 fell to 3.3 by 1985. The stability of government in a complex nation of three thousand inhabited islands, and an average growth rate in the economy of 7 percent per year over thirty years, served Indonesia well during Suharto’s tenure, and it would be difficult for others to duplicate.

On the other hand, Suharto’s legacy includes unrestrained corruption. Relatives, friends, and associates became fantastically wealthy as the working poor remained impoverished, earning at the time of Suharto’s fall less than two U.S. dollars per day. The middle class became increasingly alienated, particularly after the expanding economy burst in the economic crisis sweeping Southeast Asia in 1997.

Suharto family members became so enmeshed in the Indonesian economy that eliminating their influence, including the vast patronage system they headed, seemed improbable. It has also proven difficult to get back billions of dollars in foreign banks and overseas investments, which was looted from the national wealth. Patterns of corrupt business practices, the legacy of rule through military power, and the callous destruction of native cultures and tropical rainforests, will prove difficult, if not impossible, for successor governments to reverse.

Bibliography

Dake, Antonie C. A. The Sukarno File, 1965-1967: Chronology of a Defeat. Boston: Brill, 2006. Covers the efforts to crush the 1965 coup against Sukarno. Dake chronicles the events that culminated in the murders of the generals and the subsequent events that led to Sukarno’s ouster from the presidency and Suharto’s ascendency.

Elson, R. E. Suharto: A Political Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A detailed and scholarly study of Suharto’s life, with archival sources and interviews of key individuals. Includes maps, footnotes, a glossary, and a select bibliography.

“Suharto, Inc.” Time, May 24, 1999. An extensive exposé of Suharto and his family published on the first anniversary of the Indonesian dictator’s resignation.

Vatikiotis, Michael R. Indonesian Politics Under Suharto: The Rise and Fall of the New Order. New York: Routledge, 1999. A survey and analysis of Indonesian politics during Suharto’s regime. Includes notes and an index.

Vickers, Adrian. A History of Modern Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. A concise, informative history of modern Indonesia.