In the weeks leading up to Suharto's death on 27th January, a parade of Indonesian leaders, including President Susilo Yudhoyono, visited his bedside, showing that the man who ruled Indonesia for 32 years maintained a spectral power over the nation until the end. People wept openly when he died, and Yudhoyono declared a week of national mourning. There was adulation, perhaps some forgiveness. There will never be, however, a reckoning. Suharto will be judged in the hearts and minds of men and women, and in history books, but he will never face accusers in a court of law. His successors dared not demand he be held to account during his lifetime. Instead, they and the Indonesian people tried to grapple with a legacy that hangs over the whole of the archipelago.
Suharto said he ruled "based on the principle that the interest of the nation and… the greater group will be given priority over the individual or single group interest." The statement reads like mockery, for he is one of the ultimate examples of a personality shaping a nation's fate. Born in 1921 in Kemusuk, a small village in south-central Java, as a child Suharto was passed from one impoverished relative to the next. His schooling was heavily informed by a mix of the Javanese mysticism prevalent in the area and military training. He served in the Dutch army, then, during the second world war, Japanese-sponsored militias, which he left in 1945 to fight for Indonesia's independence. He was a good soldier, described as "tough as hell" by one western military officer. While Sukarno—Indonesia's first president, who ruled the country from independence in 1945 to 1967—was the handsome nationalist hero, the father of the country, Suharto did grunt work, eliminating threats, keeping order. He was demoted, however, when he was discovered running a sugar trading racket.
In September 1965, with Sukarno's popularity flagging, assassins killed six generals in what was painted as an attempted communist coup. With the CIA providing names of suspected communists, Suharto's soldiers killed between 500,000 and 1m people, according to most estimates. Simultaneously, he covertly organised anti-Sukarno protests which eventually convinced the president to step down. Suharto dragged the transfer of power out over two years, though, during which the catastrophic cost of instability was impressed on the Indonesian people. For many, the trauma of this era overshadows all that happened after. "Compared to the slaughter of those years, all the lies, corruption and nepotism of Suharto's regime are a small, trivial manner," said novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who was imprisoned for much of the 1960s and 1970s (and died in 2006). For those years alone, he judged, Suharto deserved to be called "a criminal against humanity."
Like an old Javanese king, Suharto rewarded loyalty with patronage and punished transgressions with exile. He never raised his voice and rarely displayed emotion, but his placid surface hid a vindictive streak he wielded freely against individuals and whole segments of the population. Within his inner circle, he played his top men against each other, stifling the emergence of challengers. Likewise, he found ways to match whole constituencies and institutions against one another, exploiting the fears of each to limit their influence and bolster his own position. Dubbed the "New Order," his rule thrived on the impression the right people were in charge, that this was best for the nation. Elections were a pretence, the outcomes pre-arranged. The security apparatus served Suharto first, everyone else after. Human rights advocates were prone to disappear. Religious leaders were co-opted or silenced. (Indonesians joked about having dental work done in Singapore because they were afraid to open their mouths at home.) Restive provinces were brutally pacified, in Aceh, West Papua and East Timor, which Suharto invaded in December 1975—with US backing—a campaign that led to the deaths of approximately a quarter of East Timor's population.
At the same time, millions of Indonesians rose above the poverty line thanks to billions in foreign capital that poured into Jakarta. Suharto's anti-communist credentials and apparent embrace of private sector development earned him the friendship of the US and western businessmen. It went unnoticed or unmentioned that he was basically transforming state-owned monopolies—for oil, steel, plastics, gas, cement, insurance, food, milk, and cooking oil—into boondoggles for his family and cronies. In 1998, the World Bank estimated that as much as 30 per cent of the country's development budget over the prior two decades had disappeared. The Suharto family holdings, meanwhile, have been estimated at anywhere from $12bn to $40bn.
Suharto's downfall was rooted in "kkn," an Indonesian acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism, which in the mid-1990s became a liability rather than a privilege. In 1996, his wife, Siti Hartinah—better known as Madame Tien, or "Madame Ten Per Cent"—died. She was herself ruthlessly corrupt but she kept the leash on their kids. After she was gone, Suharto did nothing to curb their ostentatious displays of their outrageous wealth. The following year, the Asian currency crisis hit. Prices for commodities and public transportation soared. Jobs evaporated. Parents struggled to feed children. Suharto recommended Indonesians "tighten their belts," and generally did nothing to help millions of people whose anger began rising at pace with their misery. Suharto's maxim had been: don't be surprised, don't be overwhelmed, and don't overestimate your own position. But he was surprised and overwhelmed by events precisely because he overestimated his position. As the financial crisis worsened, popular and political opposition flourished. In May 1998, six student protesters were shot, setting off days of rioting. Soon after, the military—his military—rescinded its support, and he saw that he had to step down.
After he left office, Suharto was reported by an acquaintance to be living an "untroubled" life. Would that his countrymen could say the same. It's not uncommon to hear Indonesians wax nostalgic about the stability and prosperity that accompanied Suharto's rule, but such musings overlook Suharto's own role in creating the troubles that followed his departure from office. His successors floundered as power was decentralised, economic struggles continued, ethnic conflicts flared anew and the institutions Suharto built to look after him before all others proved ill-equipped to handle the tasks a new day brought. The grievances of people in outlying provinces were suppressed but never addressed. The custom of court-style patronage spawned a culture of corruption that infected nearly every sector of society. The military has vast financial interests and often acts like a corporation—at times it has seemed to be for hire. Whatever wealth was generated was hoarded by the lucky (and related) few at the top of Suharto's pyramid. Millions upon millions remain dependent on subsidies that are becoming harder to maintain as prices—for fuel, for instance—continue to rise. Too many crimes go unpunished, too many votes are for sale.
Over time, some aspects of Suharto's rule have been rolled back, and new institutional structures have been built atop the rotten foundations he left behind. Potential flashpoints remain (in Sulawesi, for instance) and some local leaders have decreed the provenance of sharia law. But newly formed intelligence units have had striking successes against homegrown networks of violent Islamic extremists—particularly Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombing and other attacks—and a moderate strain of faith remains predominant. The economy has essentially recovered to pre-crisis levels, and growth forecasts look rosy. And elections have become competitive. Notably, in 2004, Indonesia held its first ever open presidential election. Even Suharto himself was allowed to vote.
Suharto offered stability and prosperity and in turn assumed the right to take what he wanted and do what he felt necessary to hold on to power. The people once thought that was a worthwhile trade-off. But in the 2004 election, and in preparations for another next year, it's clear that the deal candidates must make nowadays has different terms. They must pledge to fight corruption. They must pledge to honour human rights. They must understand that an upturn in fundamentalism and the increased presence of religion in the public arena is not reason enough to fondly recall a regime that killed at least half a million people and terrified many millions more.
Though often overlooked, Indonesia is and will remain one of the most interesting countries to follow in the years to come. What happens to Suharto's money and his children will provide some indication of how far the country has come. In 2000, Suharto was indicted for embezzling nearly $600m, but the supreme court threw out the charges, making the dubious claim that poor health had rendered him unable to answer accusations. In 2002, his son Tommy was found guilty of masterminding the assassination of a supreme court justice, among other charges, and sentenced to 15 years. But he served only four before being released. Few of Suharto's cronies faced justice, and his children still cash in on the family name and business connections. The government and courts can do something without the worry that dragging an old man into the dock will stir up trouble. They can send a signal that what was acceptable in the past is acceptable no more. According to the Indonesian weekly magazine Tempo, "If [the government] does nothing, the special facilities and privileges thought to have been wrongfully obtained will never end." If it does nothing, in other words, then Indonesia will still, at least in part, be ruled by Suharto.
