Volume 6 | Issue 6 | Article ID 2778 | Jun 01, 2008 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Exit Suharto

Benedict Anderson

Exit Suharto creepy about it, since Suharto himself was a healthy 50-year-old at the time.

Benedict Anderson

Benedict Anderson's "Exit Suharto" examines the life of the late Indonesian dictator in a wide-ranging political- cultural analysis. The article is reprinted from New Left Review 50, March-April, 2008.

Enlarge this image Obituary for a Mediocre Tyrant I visited Surakarta in the spring of 1972, after In 1971, the Indonesian presidential machine the Suharto government had discovered that I informed the public that Suharto and his wife had entered the country by roundabout were planning a mausoleum for themselves on methods and had informed me that I would be a spur of Mount Lawu, the dormant, 3,000m deported. After some negotiations, I was sacred volcano that lies to the east of theci- allowed two weeks to wind up my affairs and devant royal Javanese city of Surakarta. [1] The say farewell to friends. I took to the road with site had been carefully chosen, respectfully my Vespa and stopped briefly in Surakarta for a situated some metres below the early tombs of meal in the city’s pleasant amusement park. In the Mangkunegaran dynasty—the second most those days, young ‘white’ men on Vespas who insignificant of the four small Central Javacould also speak Indonesian fluently were a real principalities instituted by colonial authority in curiosity, so my table was quickly surrounded the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mrs Tien by locals. When the topic of the mausoleum Suharto—by then already quietly mocked as came up, I asked my new acquaintances what Tientje (Ten Per Cent)—claimed somethey thought of it. After an awkward silence, a connection with the little dynasty which had skinny, intelligent old man replied, in Javanese: barely survived the revolution of 1945–49. For ‘It’s like a Chinese tomb.’ Everyone tittered. He Suharto, who always insisted that he was of had two things in mind: first, that in contrast to simple peasant stock, but was rumoured to be Muslim tombs, even those of grandees, which the illegitimate son of a Chinese tycoon, the site are very simple, Chinese tombs are or were as represented a social step up; and a normal one, elaborate and expensive as the socially since hypergamy was common among the army competitive bereaved could afford. Second, in officer corps in the 1940s and after, and families the post-colony, many Chinese cemeteries had were traditionally uxorilocal. Still, thebeen flattened by bulldozers to make way for construction of this expensive, unprecedented ‘high-end’ construction projects by the state mausoleum for the future dead had something and by private realtors, speculators and

1 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF developers. cheerfully as he went on his way. There is an During the long noontide of the Suharto old belief that such susuk—tiny slivers of pure dictatorship, from the 1970s to the early 90s, gold impregnated with magic spells—bring the three things happened to the mausoleum. It bearer wealth, power and a long life. But there was gradually filled, almost to bursting, with the is a catch: for a man to die peacefully and remains of Tientje’s para-aristocratic relations, speedily, the susuk have to be withdrawn, and but none of Suharto’s; it was heavily guarded by this can only be done by the shaman who a unit of the Red Beret paratroopers who had inserted them in the first place. Otherwise death organized the vast massacres of the Left in will be a drawn-out agony. 1965–66; and it became a tourist attraction, I. LIFE AND TIMES especially for busloads of schoolchildren, so that What sort of man was he? How did he manage it was always crowded with village women to rule his country without much serious selling T-shirts, baseball caps, snacks, drinks opposition for more than three decades? and plaited bamboo fans. One thing did not Suharto’s start was humble enough. Born in happen: even after Tientje joined her relations June 1921 in a village near Jogjakarta in Central not long before the Crash of 1997, theJava, he joined the Dutch colonial military (KNIL) mausoleum never became sacred or magically at the age of 19; just about the time when the powerful. After I was finally allowed back intoWehrmacht overran the Netherlands, and the country in 1999, I often went to observe the Queen Wilhelmina and her cabinet scuttled off site. No paratroopers, no busloads of children, to London. The KNIL, like its sisters in other only a desperate handful of vendors, aEuropean colonies, was trained to suppress melancholy caretaker and the smell of a internal rebellion rather than to combat external decaying building that had already endured a enemies, and was organized racially: mostly quarter of a century of annual monsoons. It Dutch and Eurasian officers, and nativeNCO s remains to be seen what will happen to the and foot-soldiers with very limited education. place now that Suharto has finally joined hisSuharto himself had never finished his private wife. To paraphrase Walter Abish: how Chinese Muslim high school. In less than two years, is it? however, he had risen to the rank of sergeant, If the mausoleum marked an early version of as far as it was usually possible to go. At that Suharto’s ‘death foretold’, I caught a later point, Hirohito’s armies invaded the Dutch variation in Jakarta a few years ago. I had been Indies and theKNIL surrendered virtually interviewing an elderly Javanese Communist, without a fight (except for its small air arm). But who had once held a high position at the party in October 1943, when he was just 22, the newspaper Harian Rakjat (People’s Daily) and Japanese military in Java, fearing an Allied spent many years in Suharto’s grim gulag. At assault, formed a small auxiliary military force the end of the interview, to cheer him up, I called the Peta to support a planned guerrilla asked casually whether he thought Suharto resistance. [2] Suharto immediately joined this would soon be dead. It worked, but not in the force, and by 1945 had achieved the second way I expected. With a big smile he said: ‘Not at highest rank available—company commander. all! It will take a long time, and will involve After the Japanese surrender to MacArthur, and much suffering.’ How could he be so sure? Hethe hurried proclamation of Indonesia’s replied that the secret of Suharto’s enormous independence by the seasoned nationalist power, vast wealth and remarkable political politicians Sukarno and Hatta, a national army longevity was that, early in his adult life, a was established. It was composed of former renowned shaman had inserted a number of KNIL, former Peta and former members of susuk under the skin in various crucial places. various Japanese-armed youth groups, but with ‘But the shaman died quite a while ago’, he said Peta officers in the dominant position. There

2 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF was, naturally, a huge inflation of ranks:internationally. a It was also believed that since swarm of generals and colonels with immediate the first post-liberation government in Holland backgrounds as lieutenants and sergeants. was led by socialists, there was a chance of a Suharto joined the rush and, by the spring of diplomatic route to independence. By 1947, 1946, was a Lieutenant-Colonel. Morehowever, the Dutch cabinet had shifted to the importantly, he was posted just outsideright, and in July of that year a large and Jogjakarta which became the infant Republic’s successful military attack caused the new capital city when the British and Dutch seized Republic a considerable loss both of territory Batavia-Jakarta early in 1946. There were not and of access to the outside world. The many people in the new Army who had served socialists and communists were forced to accept both the Dutch and Japanese regimes within the a highly disadvantageous interim agreement in space of just six years, but Suharto was one of January 1948, and so fell from power, replaced them, and profited by the experience. In 1946, by a coalition of Muslims and ‘secular at the age of 25, he was already a relatively (bourgeois and petty aristocratic) nationalists’. senior military man. Meantime the Cold War was setting in and the It was at this point that he can be said to have left was radicalized all over Southeast Asia, started his political career. On the night of June abandoning parliamentary for military means to 27, 1946, a group of armed militiamen,come (back) to power. attached indirectly to the political ‘opposition’ (a In the summer of 1948, a civil war was looming mix of pre-war nationalists, most of whom had in Indonesia between the left and its various collaborated with the Japanese), kidnapped the adversaries, with both sides backed by military civilian Prime Minister Sutan Sjahrir, charging units and armed militias. Sudirman tried to him with weakness in dealing with the returning overcome the crisis by appointing two men to Dutch. Sukarno took direct control of the mediate: Wikana, the then Communist civilian government and demanded Sjahrir’s immediate governor of Central Java, and Suharto. In 1963 I release, which was eventually forthcoming. But interviewed Wikana in Jogjakarta, where he had the conspirators—backed openly by theretired after being sidelined by the Party’s Jogjakarta military commander and less openly younger leadership. The gentle elderly man told by the 31-year-old Commander-in-Chief General me that Suharto had been excellent, taken no Sudirman—retired to Suharto’s command-post. sides, and done everything he could to prevent From there they attempted a coup d’état on July warfare between the armed backers of the 3 which was, however, easily broken up. The cabinet and the opposition—to no avail. The civilians involved went (briefly) to jail, as did the civil war (which took place only in Republican- Jogjakarta military commander, but Sudirman held areas in Java) was brief but bloody, and the made sure that no other officers were affected. left was completely crushed. A good number of Still, the coup might have ended Suharto’s the leaders were killed in action or executed military career, and he was very carefulafter surrendering. thereafter. After the formal transfer of sovereignty at the Rise to power end of 1949 the new member of the United From the autumn of 1945 up to January 1948, Nations faced an enormously difficult situation. the core leadership of the ruling multi-party The colonial economy had been devastated by coalition in Indonesia consisted of a variety of wartime Japanese rule and the military struggle socialists and communists, including some with the returning Dutch. The huge popular returnees from Holland who had taken part in mobilizations that began against the Japanese the anti-Nazi underground. They were not and continued during the ‘revolution’ created a ‘contaminated’ by collaboration with thelarge body of people who expected to be Japanese, a strong card domestically and rewarded for their sacrifices. But the lightly

3 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF populated eastern part of the archipelago had growing power of the Communist Party in Java) been successively occupied after the war firstopened contacts with the ‘enemy’. By then he by Australia and then by the Dutch, so that was so senior that he was the automatic Republican activism there was difficult.replacement for the Army Commander General Furthermore, the Dutch–Indonesian agreement, Yani, when the latter was overseas. supervised by the US, required the Republic to Meantime, political polarization between right return all pre-war properties of Dutchand left was increasing rapidly as hyperinflation capitalists. Finally, no political party had even embedded a sauve qui peut mentality which come close to monopolizing the revolutionary persists to this day. It is an indication of upsurge. Hence, a multi-party constitutional Suharto’s penchant for secrecy and manoeuvre democracy came into being, which even that he was by then a trusted army leader (his permitted the surviving Communists to rebuild secret contacts with Malaysian intelligence and, their strength. One could also say that there indirectly, with the CIA were well hidden even was no alternative, given the country’sfrom Yani) and an apparent Sukarno loyalist. geography; the military was powerful, but it had Feint, massacre, coup no air force and not much in the way of a navy. The crisis finally exploded on the morning of In this environment Suharto started to make his October 1, 1965, when a small group of mostly mark, by a successful amphibious attack on pro- middle-ranking army officers kidnapped and Dutch and other dissidents in Celebes. This in later killed six senior generals on the grounds turn led to him being appointed in 1957 (aged that they were planning Sukarno’s overthrow. 36) the Military Commander of Central Java, a Most of these disaffected officers had long key position in the army hierarchy. Then he personal associations with Suharto, and it is made another serious mistake, not so much virtually certain that they informed him of their political (he was very careful) but financial. He plans. They made no attempt to seize him, and his trusted staff became involved withthough he had operational command of all certain dubious Chinese tycoons in extensive seasoned military units in the capital. Nor did smuggling operations and other businesses. Suharto make the slightest effort to warn Yani This resulted in his being dismissed by the High and his comrades of what was afoot. Instead he Command. (Two of these Chinese friends later crushed the conspirators with ease and became key cronies under the dictatorship.) But proclaimed that they were tools of the armies usually take care of their own, and Communist Party. Suharto was sent off to the staff and command Almost all the military officers involved in what school in Bandung, where he did well, and after was then called ‘the coup’—though the actors that was appointed Commander of the Army themselves claimed that they were protecting Strategic Reserve, planned as the HighSukarno from a military coup steered by the Command’s strike force against provincial CIA—were executed, via death sentences in dissidents and other ‘national enemies’. In the kangaroo courts, or outside any legality. Only early 1960s he commanded the joint operations one (barely) survived the dictatorship. Colonel designed to liberate ‘West Papua’ from residual Abdul Latief, who was tried and sentenced to Dutch colonialism. There was no military life imprisonment, probably avoided execution victory, since the Americans intervenedbecause of his long and close association with diplomatically against the Dutch, but Suharto the Suharto family; perhaps Tientje intervened. was treated by the press as a kind of national After enduring 32 years in prison and hero. When Sukarno decided, in 1963–64, on a unimaginable suffering (the wounds he received military confrontation with the London-arranged when arrested were allowed to fester to the Malaysian Federation, Suharto was named point that half his body was riddled with Deputy Commander, and secretly (fearing the maggots), Latief was released by Suharto’s

4 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF successor, Habibie, but suffered a cripplinghalf a million. The intelligence apparatus was stroke. When I interviewed him not long before also cunning enough to enlist the help of a he died, much of what he said wasnumber of captured Communists, some quite unintelligible. But when I asked him how he felt senior, who betrayed their comrades and even on the evening of October 1, when Suharto had participated in their torture. By the end of the crushed the ‘coup’, he said, brokenly, but year, the Party had been completely clearly: ‘I felt betrayed.’ destroyed—for good, as they say. With the mass media closed down except for President Sukarno struggled vainly to stop the the mouthpieces of the military, the Suharto killings and rally his supporters, but he no group published photographs of the decayed longer had access to the mass media. In early bodies of the dead generals and announced that March 1966, paratroopers in mufti surrounded their eyeballs had been gouged out, and their the palace where an emergency cabinet testicles slashed off with razors, by sex-crazed meeting was being held, broke up the meeting members of the Communists’ Women’sand arrested fifteen ministers while Sukarno Organization. (Some years later, by accident, I fled to his ‘summer palace’ in Bogor. On the discovered the text of the doctors’ post- evening of March 11, three generals visited him mortem, which stated that the generals suffered there and demanded that he sign a document only wounds from bullets and rifle-butts, withtransferring all executive power to Suharto. eyes and genitals all intact.) Within a few days Feeling himself at gunpoint Sukarno signed the all Communist offices in Jakarta had beenauthorization letter, which gave the General, occupied or destroyed. On October 17, the elite who had often sworn loyalty to his President, Red Berets arrived in Central Java and began the opportunity to replace him the following the mass killing of men and women of the left. year, and keep him under house arrest till his The same killings started in East Java with the death in 1970. Curiously enough the original of arrival of the paratroopers in mid-November, this famous letter has never been seen by the and in Bali when they landed there in mid- public, and was said to have been lost. Many December. [3] years later, after Suharto’s fall, a young aide of In every case, the military enlisted the panicked Sukarno who was with him that night told the and murderous help of the ‘mass organizations’ press that the signed document had carelessly of the Party’s many enemies. The strategy of been typed on Army Headquarters stationery. involving large numbers of civilians in the By this time Suharto had achieved full power in massacres achieved two goals. First it allowed ‘legal terms’, but he continued to deepen it in the military to announce, and a good number of the years immediately following. All state foreign reporters to believe, that the citizens institutions, including the Armed Forces, were had ‘run amok’ on a vast scale. Second, it massively purged of ‘Communists’, ‘Communist ensured that there would never be anysympathizers’, Sukarnoists and other investigation of the killings, since blood was on subversives. No ruler in the archipelago had too many civilian hands. No one really knows ever had such a chance to pack the how many people were killed—the figuresbureaucracy, the legislature, the judiciary and offered run from half a million to two. On hisparastatal agencies with supporters, sincere or deathbed, the by-then marginalized General opportunist. This initial packing was later Sarwo Edhie, who led the Red Berets in systematically continued: by the early 1990s, 1965–66, even said he had been responsible for the number of bureaucrats was triple what it the death of three million people. [4] Nor does had been in 1970. anyone really know how many were imprisoned Mindful of the niceties of protocol in the for years without trial in the grimmest‘international community’, Suharto did not conditions, but certainly the number exceeded eliminate the party system altogether. But all

5 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF the conflicting Muslim parties were forced into a began the systematic destruction of the single United Development Party, led by a sly country’s primary forests by favoured cronies opportunist recruited by Suharto’s personal and military men, as well as foreign political intelligence agency, financedcorporations. The main beneficiary of all this (modestly) by the regime, and forbidden to use was the dictator himself, who is generally religious symbols when campaigning. The same thought to have had something like $73 billion thing happened to the rest of the tolerated in various accounts by the mid-1990s. [6] To surviving parties, variously Protestant, Catholic say nothing of his greedy children and assorted and conservative secular nationalist, which close relations and cronies. were compressed into an IndonesianDuring the 1970s and 80s, Suharto had many Democratic Party, also funded by the regime admirers in the West for what they saw as his and led by intelligence nominees. The regime sincere campaign to modernize the Indonesian had no trouble winning two-thirds majorities in economy, to promote rapid growth, to institute every ‘election’ held till the dictator fell, thanks the Green Revolution in the countryside, to to a state party (but it was not called a ‘party’) bring rapid population increase to a halt and to which included all members of the civilian expand that ‘middle class’ so commonly bureaucracy, the military, the police, assorted believed to be the harbinger of real democracy. ‘technocrats’ and mercenary journalists and These claims are by no means entirely academics. mistaken, but they need to be looked at Development? comparatively, especially if one remembers the Suharto’s difficulties lay elsewhere. By the end vast subsidies provided over two decades by of Sukarno’s soi-disant revolutionary regime, the IGGI. The most obvious comparisons are Guided Democracy (1959–65), the economy with Indonesia’s neighbours, Malaysia and the was in ruins, and the rate of Philippines.inflation If one considers health first, by the staggeringly high. But fortune and Washington beginning of the 21st century, all three were with the General. At a moment when the countries had about the same life expectancies Vietnam War was ‘going very badly’, and huge (males in the late 60s, females in the lower numbers of American troops were poised to 70s). But the statistics on infant mortality look cross the Pacific, Suharto had completelyquite different: Indonesia shows 33 deaths per destroyed the largest Communist Party in the 1,000 live births, the Philippines close to 23 and world outside the USSR and China. For this the Malaysia 17. On the other hand, thanks to American political elite was naturally grateful. extremely invasive and coercive policies, the Furthermore, Indonesia was strategicallynatural rate of population increase was 1.38 per located and had vast mineral and timber cent for Indonesia, 1.78 per cent for Malaysia resources; new oil fields were just beginning to and 1.95 per cent for the Philippines. (Literacy be productive. Suharto understood what he had in all three states was around 90 per cent.) to do: the legal system was promptly revamped The economies show much greater differences. to open most of the doors to Western capital If one divides the labour force between the that Sukarno had tried to close. The Americans agrarian, industrial and service sectors, the accordingly rounded up the Western Europeans comparison looks like this: Malaysia, agriculture and the Japanese to create the14.5 per cent, industry 36 per cent and services Intergovernmental Group on Indonesia, which 49.5 per cent; the Philippines, 36 per cent, 16 for many years thereafter essentially paid for per cent and 48 per cent; Indonesia, 46.5 per Indonesia’s development budget. [5] The cent, 11.8 per cent and 41.7 per cent. Per capita formation of OPEC and the huge rise in oil prices GDP in the three countries was about $12,100 in in 1973 gave Suharto riches undreamed of Malaysia, $5,100 in the Philippines and $3,600 hitherto. In the late 1960s, the government in Indonesia. In fact, given the enormous

6 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF inequality prevailing especially in the Philippines the cheerful reply was: ‘Don’t worry, it will be and Indonesia, the real annual ‘product’ for the over in a few weeks.’ mass of people is substantially lower than these The initial invasion was a disaster, with figures suggest. Most strikingly of all, in a larger Indonesian planes bombing their own ground context, almost all the countries whosetroops in several places. Two years later, Fretilin currencies were severely damaged in the Asian still controlled more than half of the demi- Crisis of 1997–98 have today more or less island’s territory. Jimmy Carter, the ‘human retrieved their old position vis-à-vis the dollar. rights’ president, then secretly sent Suharto The biggest exception is Indonesia, where the some of the OV-10 Broncos that had had so ‘collapse’ exchange rate has remained largely much to answer for in Vietnam. They turned the unchanged. tide. Thousands upon thousands of Timorese East Timor’s torment fled to the Indonesian-controlled lowlands. There were other fronts on which Suharto’s grip There they were herded into ‘resettlement was slipping. Of these the most important was camps’, and large numbers died of hunger and ‘internal security’, with East Timor as the disease. But the resistance never gave up, exemplary case. When the Portuguesegradually regained strength, and started a dictatorship finally fell in April 1974, he wassteady underground penetration of the persuaded that his intelligence agencies’ ‘black’ lowlands. operatives could manipulate the internal politics Suharto tried everything he could think of, but of the decolonizing entity to prevent the nothing really worked. The land of East Timor, ‘communist’ Fretilin party from taking power. famously arid, had no mineral resources and But the gamble failed. After a brief, bloody and scarcely any forests; its people were Indonesia-instigated civil war, Fretilin did take desperately poor and largely illiterate. Teachers power, and hastened to forestall Jakarta by hated being assigned there, as did bureaucrats. declaring the ex-colony an independent state. Attempts to settle migrants from other islands After some initial hesitation, Suharto, basking in failed in the face of popular hostility and a sea of oil money, decided on military invasion, intermittent sabotage. The territory’s one high- followed by annexation. All the messages from class export, coffee, became a military the US were positive. Ford and Kissinger arrived monopoly. The deeper problem was that in East in Jakarta on the eve of the expedition, and the Timor, Indonesians, often half-realizing it, were latter is said to have told Suharto: ‘Just do it in the position of colonialists. Hence the regular quickly.’ Virtually all the armaments used for colonial complaint that the East Timorese were the invasion were American, but Washington ‘so ungrateful’, language that would have been winked at what was a clear violation of the taboo anywhere in Indonesia itself. existing arms agreement between the two Furthermore, East Timor could not be countries, which specified that they could notaccommodated in the standard ‘our centuries- be used externally. The Americans had another long struggle against the Dutch’ narrative of reason to be complaisant: in a secretnationalist ideology and school textbooks. agreement Suharto had permitted (against Worse still, they were Catholic in a 90 per cent international law) US nuclear submarines to Muslim national population. Irritatingly, the pass through the Timor Strait without surfacing, Vatican refused to merge East Timor’s priests thus evading Soviet monitoring from the into the pliant and often cowardly Indonesian heavens. A few weeks before the invasion, a Catholic hierarchy. high-level team of military and civilianBut there was still another factor which has not intelligence operatives, on a propaganda tour in generally been much noticed. Virtually all the the US, dropped by Cornell University. When I soldiers at the time of the 1945–49 Indonesian asked one of them about plans for East Timor, revolution were in their twenties. So large and

7 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF so young was this force that a military academy president.’ was not opened until 1957. The first classThe same methods and the same lack of graduated in 1960, with only childhoodsuccess marked the regime’s military memories of the struggle against the Dutch. suppression campaigns in Acheh and West They had been green lieutenants, with no Papua. Acheh had been a quiet and prosperous important role to play, during the massacres of province in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the the Left in the mid-60s. East Timor, their firstdiscovery of a vast field of natural gas led to the experience of war, came ten years later when creation of exploitation enclaves, heavily they were in their thirties. Since the invasion guarded and filled with workers and managers was justified to them as a campaign againstbrought in from other parts of Indonesia. communism, the model they were given was Military rule set in; armed resistance followed, 1965–66: no mercy, torture, burning of villages, responded to by East Timorian methods. The rapes, crude intelligence operations and, most end was a terribly costly stalemate in which notoriously, in the spirit of 65, the organization neither the military nor the resistance had the and financing of lumpen pro-military militiaspower to come out on top. It turned out that among the local population, who gotsome of the Acheh resistance commanders had accustomed to using methods from which even earlier had some Red Beret training. More or the army officers occasionally lessshrank. the same was true in West Papua, where Characteristically, Army HQ prepared a secret timber-mad cronies and Western mining manual on effective torture techniques and how conglomerates worked in a vast forbidding to avoid being caught trying them. One of the terrain where a small armed resistance best-known younger commanders, who had continued right through the era of the successfully ambushed and killed Fretilin’s first dictatorship. military chief, Nicolau Lobato, had himself In the long run, all these adventures camcorded with his triumphant booted feet on undermined the prestige and self-confidence of his enemy’s corpse. He would tell occasional younger-generation military leaders, not one of reporters that he fought off boredom of whoman ever emerged as a hero in the mould of evening by replaying the videotape. some of the veterans of the older generation. In November 1991, increasingly boldThe Asian Crisis of 1997 gave striking evidence demonstrations by youngsters in Dili, the small of how the institution had been hollowed out. capital city, were answered by Thea military newspapers, which no one but characteristically brutal and stupid outburst of military people willingly read, and which killing. Unfortunately for Suharto, a brave young depended on large subsidies, were forced to English journalist called Max Stahl managed to close down and never re-emerged. After film the bloodshed and smuggle the videotape Suharto fell, newspapers reported that the head out of the country. The film’s internationalof military intelligence was being investigated circulation destroyed overnight the Suharto for forging large amounts of currency. When regime’s constant assurances to thereporters questioned the general about this, he ‘international community’ that the East Timor engagingly replied: ‘Look, what could I do? Our problem was ‘over’, and enormouslybudget had been cut to nothing, and the high encouraged the resistance. The capture of command couldn’t give me any more money, Xanana Gusmão, the heroic successor to but there were all these militias in East Timor Lobato, could not be handled any more by a who hadn’t been paid for a long time and were quick execution. Jailed in Jakarta, his prestige getting really upset.’ So he went on to become, undamaged, he became a hero even to some briefly, the Army Commander. Indonesian youngsters in the opposition, who Father of bankruptcy would joke, ‘If only we had Xanana as our The secrets of the ultra-secretive

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President—security failure, industrialization A few braver souls would mock his Indonesian failure, financial failure, moral failure, parental for its Javanese accent, imported Javanese failure (all his children either monsters or grammar and Javanese moral clichés. Once, nonentities), even political failure—came oozing enraged by student criticisms of one of his out bit by bit. For the irony of Suharto’s story is wife’s more extravagant ‘projects’, he blurted that he was finally undone by the forces thatout that he would gebuk anyone who dared to had made his long dictatorship possible. In the criticize her. Gebuk is Javanese for ‘beat the hell early 1990s, he had been persuaded by out of someone’. On another occasion, privately Washington to ‘open up’ his country more addressing the group of ambitious toadies who widely to global financial capital. A lot of fastran his National Youth League, many of them money flowed into a plethora of shady newnon-Javanese, he astounded his listeners with a banks created to take advantage of this sudden long digression about the mystical meanings of bonanza. By then Suharto was living onthe names for the letters in the Javanese borrowed time. Indonesia had become a net alphabet (the State Secretariat made sure this importer of oil, and the forests were largely curious rant was never published). Late on in his gone. Local industrial development was weak, dictatorship Suharto was seduced into helping and the education system had been decaying an experienced journalist ghost-write his for years. When the ‘Asian Crisis’ broke out, autobiography. What blazes out from the pages Indonesia was hit harder than any other is burning resentment—resentment of all those country. Within a few weeks the rupiah lost who thought he was stupid, uneducated, a four-fifths of its exchange value. Dozens mysticalof novice, manipulated by his aides, and banks went bankrupt. Millions of people lost so on. The central motif is ‘I, and only I, decided their jobs. The national debt climbed dizzyingly. everything’. Butrancune led him His toadies had long flattered him with the title uncharacteristically to claim—correctly—that in of Bapak Pembangunan (Father of1983 he had personally ordered the execution Development) but by the beginning of 1998, of several thousand small-time thugs. [7] The bitter local wits had turned it into Bapak book was barely out when Suharto had second Pembangkrutan (Father of Bankruptcy). Nothing thoughts and ordered its recall, a rare case of a more cruelly demonstrated this Waterloo than dictator banning his own book. the photos of the haggard dictator at his desk In fact he was Javanese to the bone, secretly while the capo of the IMF, arms akimbo, stands consulting shamans and astrologers, and behind him, ultimatum symbolically in hand. visiting magically powerful caves, tombs and so What was he to do? The thinking that led to on. In late 1997, shaken to his core by the Suharto’s stepping aside in 1998 could be financial collapse, Suharto let it be known to the formulated in two quite separate ways. The first press that he was prepared to lèngsèr kaprabon is cultural. Suharto had no oratorical gifts and become a pandito. The Javanese words are whatsoever—almost always he scrupulously a kind of cliché drawn from the old chronicles of droned his way through tedious, statistic-filled, Javanese kings and from the even older shadow- cliché-ridden speeches written for him, in play repertoire, based on the Mahabharata and bureaucratic Indonesian, by the StateRamayana. Lèngsèr kaprabon can be translated Secretariat. As John Roosa has pointed out, no as ‘abdicate the throne’, while pandito means one remembers a single phrase Suharto coined Great (Mystical) Sage. In effect, the Great King, in thirty-three years in power. (Siad Barre? in old age, passes the kingdom to his successor Franco?) Probably he did not even think in and ends his days as a Revered Sage and Indonesian, which he had had to acquire in his Counsellor. This utterance was received with late teens. Occasionally, however, he would let bitter mirth among his many young enemies, his guard down, especially when he was furious. who believed not a word of it. In fact, he

9 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF probably meant it, at least at that moment. For senior officer corps, a generation younger than Suharto here let slip what many had long his own. The solution was remarkable. suspected, that in some moods he thought of Throughout much of his dictatorship Suharto himself as a monarch, and maybe really had been visibly hostile to political Islam. In the expected to play a key further role as the Wise 1970s, his political spymaster Ali Murtopo had Man of whatever-next. created a Komando Jihad, partly formed by Calculating the succession released and desperate prisoners from the The second reason for Suharto’s decision to failed Islamic-state rebel movement of the retire was straightforwardly political, seasoned 1950s and early 60s. Some of these sad with several tablespoons ofrancune - mercenaries had carried out an amateurish concentrate. Stalwart to the last, he would show bombing of part of Borobudur, the famous 9th- ‘them’ what would happen without him. Re- century Buddhist stupa in Central Java. It suited elected president for the lastthe regime’s book to have ‘Islamic terrorists’ time—unanimously, as always—in March 1998, secretly on its payroll. Then, suddenly, in his old he had picked as his running mate theage, Suharto took his family on a highly aeronautical engineer Habibie. [8] This was publicized, deluxe pilgrimage to Mecca, from something new and remarkable, since over the which he returned not only as a ‘Haji’ but with past two decades the vice-president had always an entirely fictitious, new first been an (unthreatening) retired general.name—Muhammad! Habibie, who came from Celebes, was often Habibie was now instructed to create what was regarded as an amiable, lightweight gasbag, briefly known as the League of Muslim who had persuaded the dictator to spend untold Indonesian Intellectuals (ICMI). The engineer sums of money on building an export aviation learned fast. He had previously astonished industry along the lines of the German company pious Indonesian Muslims in the US by telling Messerschmitt, where the engineer had worked them that the Prophet was akin to a television for many years. The US (in the person of set, faithfully transmitting Allah’s programmes Boeing) made sure that these planes would to serious viewers. But Muslim intellectuals, never meet ‘international’ standards, and in any excluded from power for decades, rushed to join case the Crash of 1997 had ended the whole the ICMI, also with Machiavellian intentions. enterprise. Suharto might wish to use them, but they would But Habibie’s candidacy also served another also use him—and they were much younger. As purpose. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Suharto it turned out ICMI, which had no social or increasingly felt that the armed forces might be religious base, disappeared in a puff of smoke slipping out of his control. So he started to when the dictatorship collapsed. But Suharto’s manipulate high-level promotions in thecalculation had been that, although Habibie military: in the first instance Tientje’s nonentity would have general Muslim support in brother, and later a visibly unbalanced and counterpoise to the army, he would be too weak fascist-minded son-in-law; and in the second not to need to turn to the Great Sage for instance former personal aides, whom military instructions and help. wits joked about as prawira piningit. Prawira is In this the ex-dictator would be gravely Javanese for officer, whilepiningit refers to the disappointed. Habibie, an affable, garrulous old aristocratic tradition of putting daughters, figure, quite aware of the enormous public after their first menstruation, into seclusion until hostility to Suharto after his fall, struck out on they were successfully married off. In effect,his own—and Suharto is said never to have ‘virgin officers’. spoken to him again. He released almost all But Suharto was also thinking about how to surviving political prisoners (including Col. Abdul create a political counterweight to the active Latief) and ended virtually all mass media

10 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF censorship. Out of this came a torrent of abuse way things were. One or two would mention for the Great Sage, demands that he be tried for Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the country’s greatest his crimes, and a strong push for ‘total reform’ writer, whose oeuvre was banned throughout of the political system. Habibie also made a Suharto’s New Order. start at organizing the first free elections thatIf the same question had been posed in the Indonesia had experienced since 1955. More 1950s, the answers would have been strikingly still, he agreed that the East Timorese completely different: many ‘heroes’ of the should be allowed a referendum on their future, colonial-era nationalist and Islamic movements monitored by the UN. The military were at first and the revolution were still alive and publicly furious about this; but then told Habibie that, active. The contrast points to a central legacy of with the help of their notoriously violent militias, the long dictatorship—the production of an they could guarantee that the natives would opt overwhelmingly timid, corrupt and mediocre for Indonesian citizenship. Unfortunately for political class. Resentful, suspicious and them, they had not reckoned with Xanana’s cunning, the dictator made sure that no guile. Against vehement opposition within the potential rivals, military or civilian, could resistance, he had sent word from jail that all develop any independent social or political East Timorese should massively support the ex- base. Even his abject cabinet ministers believed dictator’s electoral machine in the national they were under surveillance. The amiable, ballot held in June 1999. So huge was this intelligent son of one of these ministers machine’s success in the territory that military studiously avoided me during his first three intelligence let down its guard; they were livid years at Cornell—on parental orders. But in his and bewildered when the great majority of the last year, now socialized to American campus population voted for independence in the norms, he suddenly became very friendly. His referendum two months later. father, he reported, had forbidden him ever to In retrospect Habibie’s brief presidency had mention anything political when he telephoned many good moments. Unluckily, he believed home, since he was sure his lines were tapped. that these earned him a full term as a real Well-educated in some ways, the boy turned out president, at which point his stock plummeted to know almost nothing about his country’s and he felt compelled to return to his second history and had never read the many important patria, a Kohl-created united Reich. From this books about Indonesia’s politics. moment on, Suharto disappeared from public Suharto terrified people, not only on the basis of view, successfully fending off demands that he his blood-stained record, but by his be put on trial thanks to faithful doctors’ reports demeanour—chilly, silent, masked, except for that he was too ill or too senile to face the occasional eruptions of real or staged rage. But courts. Nor was the political elite he had created with international backing he also acquired the eager to go after him—he knew all their resources to buy people on a massive scale. In miserable secrets. the early years of the regime, it was his fellow- II. SOME LEGACIES generals who were the main beneficiaries of his From the later 1980s on, I used regularly to ask largesse, but after 1973 andOPEC it was young Indonesian visitors and new students increasingly the so-called technocrats, arriving on the Cornell University campus: ‘Who economists and engineers of many different is the living Indonesian that you most admire?’ types who became the richest (non-Chinese) Almost invariably, the reaction was merely a people in the country, as they were given puzzled scratching of the head, as if the control of the ministries of oil and gas, basic and question were ridiculous. Sometimes alight industry, finance, foreign trade, youngster would hesitantly name a popular folk- employment and so on. They had no political singer whose lyrics were mildly critical of the base and were reliably loyal and compliant.

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In his final years, however, it was Muslims (often nominees from all the other political parties and of Arab descent), especially Muslim technocrats the military, with Megawati as his vice- and intellectuals, on whom the cornucopia fell. president. Rather full of himself (‘I got a A whole generation and a half of politicians message from Allah summoning me to be grew up within and absorbed the authoritarian, President’), Wahid felt humiliated by his corrupt and clientelist political culture that position, and tried to extract himself by Suharto created. He liked to play them conspicuousoff interventions into internal army against each other, but would tolerate no affairs, a drastic reshuffling of his cabinet and substantial or inflammatory variousrhetoric. other manoeuvres. He lasted only a Deliberately or not, he created over time the year and a half, at which point all the parties Indonesian national oligarchy of today:except his own agreed to impeach him and quarrelsome, but intermarried; competitive, but remove him from office. When Megawati avoiding any serious internal conflict; withoutsucceeded him, she promised and delivered a ideas, but determined to hang on to what they ‘rainbow’ cabinet, in which all the parties (if one have, at all costs. This is the main reason why includes a renegade from Wahid’s who became Suharto remained above the law after his fall, Defence Minister) had their quotas. The target and why his children, except for the murderer of the oligarchy had been achieved: a Tommy, continue to control many of the parliament without an opposition, and every country’s television stations, tollways and other party clique sharing in the perquisites of power. strategic assets. The crucial thing is that this Sukarno’s daughter was not an energetic figure national oligarchy and its hangers-on are largely in any case, but the absolute lack of any incapable of thinking outside the old regime’s creative initiatives during the three years of her box. Cynics joke that there used to be one big presidency was also due to what Dan Slater has Suharto; now there are hundreds of little ones. nicely termed the cartelization of the political How did the oligarchy survive the popular system. [9] demands for reform after the mass protests that A third factor was the general outlook of the erupted as a result of the 1997 financial crisis? oligarchy, which feared popular mobilizations One reason was the deep-seated fragmentation outside their control, fully accepted the neo- of the electorate, reminiscent of the elections of liberal international order, and had no interest 1955. The biggest winner in 1999 was the in anything that smelled of the left. The army ‘secular nationalist’ party led by Megawati, a leaders not only accepted the cartel but were lazy and overweight daughter of Sukarno. But it important players within it. Nonetheless, as the failed to get even one third of the votes, and popularity of the parties visibly declined, the lost support in succeeding elections. Alloligarchy felt forced to change the method of governments since then have had to be electing the president, by opening the office to coalitions. the sentiments of the national electorate. This is Second, under the constitutional rules inherited how, in 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, an from the Suharto era, the president was not unassuming but intelligent Javanese (retired) popularly elected (until 2004), but rather general, a key behind-the-scenes member of selected by the party-dominated Supreme the oligarchy and Megawati’s Senior Minister for People’s Consultative Assembly. After the Security and Defence, became Indonesia’s first national elections of 1999, when the reform tide popularly elected president. But the party he was still high, this body elevated Abdurrahman created for himself did not do well, and he has Wahid, whose party won 10 per cent of the largely succumbed to the logic of cartelization: vote—partly because of his popularity with the passivity, systematic incorporation of any reformers, but mainly because he was too weak possible parliamentary opposition, and catholic to prevent his cabinet being packed bydivision of the emoluments in his gift. It is not

12 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF very likely that he will be re-elected in 2009, but very different story. In the colonial period, his replacement will not be very different,Protestant evangelism had its main successes barring some popular upheaval which seems for with minority groups in remote or upland now over the horizon. regions, which were divvied up among different Characteristically, when Suharto finally died on sects with different overseas sponsors. Hence 27 January 2008, the President presidedeven in the colonial period Protestantism tearfully over the funeral, worked things out became closely associated with Outer Island with Suharto’s children, who own manyTV ethnicities, creating separate ethno-cultural stations, so that no ‘negative’ reports on the ‘churches’ for the Toba Bataks, the Karo Bataks, dead man would be aired, and ordered flags all the Ambonese, the Toradjans and so on. It is over the country to be half-masted for a week. telling that the largest-circulation newspapers in Luckily, in many places this order was scornfully Jakarta under the Suharto regime were rejected. controlled by Catholics and Protestants: the Cloaks of faith most easily intimidated and therefore the most A second major legacy relates to the political tolerated. It was not long before the obsequious parties and their competitors. Like many Catholic Kompas was quietly mocked as military men, Suharto despised such parties Kempes (flat, like a tyre), and the Protestant and, as we have seen, corrupted and castrated Sinar Harapan (Light of Hope) as Sirna Harapan those that he tolerated. Other than that, he paid (All Hope is Gone). them no attention. Since the legal parties were As for the vast Muslim majority, Suharto closely completely marginalized and had no influence followed the advice of the panjandrum of Dutch on policy, they bore their impotence without colonial Islamic studies, C. Snouck Hurgronje attracting much in the way of political support (who had had the courage to go to Mecca or funnelling social protest. Under thesedisguised as a pilgrim): give them everything conditions, people soon realized that the only they want that is not political. Hence, until the institutions which Suharto was usually cautious 1990s, Suharto donated enormous sums for the about suborning or directly suppressing were building of high-tech mosques in the bourgeois those based on religion. After all, one of the neo-Arab style, schools, charities and ideological banners under which the slaughter subventions for airplane pilgrims to the Holy of the Communists had been organized was the City, while brutally repressing any primordial battle against atheism. Suharto’s manifestations of political Islam. religion was a characteristic JavaneseToday, any serious visitor to Indonesia should syncretism of Islam, Hindu-Buddhist mysticism visit the beautiful old mosque in Surabaya and shamanistic animism—but this was usually dedicated to Sunan Ampel, said to be one of the concealed from the public. nine founders of Islam in the country. It is Christians, though a small minority, had high located in the centre of the old town, next to the educational qualifications—a heritagetraditional of Arab and Chinese quarters. Visitors colonial-era state favouritism and missionary will find a civilized warning posted against energy. Generally sycophantic, eager fordisturbing the peace of many tired and protection against phantom Muslim fanaticism, hardworking neighbours. This mosque is, to my they were useful to Suharto’s cynical ideological knowledge, the only significant one in the campaign for national ‘unity’. But they also had country that still uses the beautiful unmediated crucial support in Rome, Western Europe and, human voice for calling the faithful to prayer. above all, the US. Catholics were not a real Everywhere else, and this is another Suharto problem, since their power was largely based in legacy, the calls to prayer are made fortissimo Java, and their hierarchical leadership was with the help of high-amp loudspeakers, and easily bought off or cowed. Protestantism was a often lazily taken from tapes.

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The relative immunity of religious institutions generation—‘veterans of the Revolution’. Still, from Suharto’s increasing insistence on his own he took extra precautions. The most striking of form of Gleichschaltung had consequences that these was a budgetary allocation policy which in he failed to predict. All kinds of political, no way sufficed for a modern military, especially economic, ethnic and even criminal interests one in power. (At various points in the 1980s which, under other circumstances, would have and 90s, senior military officials would even say gravitated to political parties clustered round in public that the budget covered only about different religious denominations. The lateone third of their needs.) This also provided Suharto period thus saw the emergence of plausible evidence to foreign reporters, scholars something unimaginable before he came to and, of course, officials that democracy was up power: Protestant street-thugs, Catholicahead, somewhere along the yellow-brick road. extortionists, Muslim mercenaries. After his fall, The financial solution was ingenious and had its the consequences became bloodily evident. roots in the short period after 1949 when Protestant Ambonese hoodlums who had long Indonesia was a constitutional democracy. The controlled part of Jakarta’s brothels, bars and country was desperately poor after the ravages gambling dens were evicted by Muslimof the Depression, the Japanese Occupation and gangsters loudly proclaiming Muslim morality. the revolution, and the demands on a series of [10] Forced to return to Ambon, the defeated weak governments were substantial. Some Protestant hoods convinced almost all the local provincial military commanders, headed Protestants that they had been victims of towards warlord status, began to create their Muslim aggression. own hidden budgets by protecting smugglers, Meantime, the corrupt, but quietist, colonial-era controlling local export revenues and practising local Protestant Church was being undermined extortion, especially of Chinese entrepreneurs by fanatical American and German evangelical who nonetheless found these commanders missionaries, who provided much-needed social useful at the price. We have earlier observed services but insisted that Islam was the work of Suharto getting into this game in the Satan. The outbreak of cruel religious conflict in mid-1950s. the Moluccas, which had never experienced The big change, however, came in the year anything of the kind before, was initiated by a 1957. The very free elections held in 1955 had Protestant massacre of an entire Muslim shown that no political party was able to win village—no surprise that this was not reported more than one quarter of the electorate, but in the Western press. No surprise either that the about 77 per cent of the vote went to four large alliance of gangsters with fanatical Protestants parties, three of them based on the heavily led sizeable numbers of other gangsters and populated island of Java. These three were a so- fanatics to ‘come to the rescue’ of their fellow- called secular nationalist party, a ‘traditionalist’ Muslims. The police and military, who should Muslim party and the Communist Party, while have prevented the bloodshed that followed, the fourth, a ‘modernist Islamic’ party, was often broke up along religious lines. The result strong above all in non-Javanese areas. That the was a savage local civil war in the Moluccas, two (usually) mutually hostile Islamic parties from which no one but gangsters profited. could not together win even a small majority in Arms and assets a country which is nominally 90 per cent Muslim Suharto rightly believed till the very end that points to the real peculiarity of Indonesia in the one Indonesian institution capable of felling today’s Islamic world. him was the Army. After the massive purges of Prior to the generally peaceable political arrival 1966–67 he could be sure of the loyal support of of Islam in the mid-15th century—eight hundred a now completely anti-communist officer corps, years after the Prophet and his immediate composed mainly of people of his ownsuccessors had achieved astounding military

14 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF successes in the Near East and on theunions attached. In one blow, the Army thus Mediterranean littoral—Old Java for centuries seized almost the entire ‘advanced’ sector of had been culturally dominated by an eclectic the economy, and made use of these resources mix of Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism and local to win the civil war that broke out at the start of animism. Virtually all of the grand monuments 1958, despite heavy CIA assistance to the which earn Indonesia a substantial tourist rebels. Most of these enterprises were parcelled income are pre-Islamic. The arrival of the Dutch out, and either mismanaged or effectively at the beginning of the 17th century helped looted, making a major contribution to the block any thoroughgoing Arab-Muslimeconomic crisis that undid Sukarno’s Guided transformation. Thus even today the Javanese Democracy. are divided between (mostly urban) ‘modernist’ As noted above, Suharto had far more resources Muslims who have no patience with syncretism to dispense than his predecessor, while the and superstition, ‘traditionalist’ Muslims (mostly Army’s overwhelming political power helped it rural) whose outlook is both nationalist and to build a huge, ramshackle economic empire syncretic, and ‘statistical’ Muslims who are independent of the national budget, often with circumcized, married and buried according to the cooperation of favourite Chinese tycoons. It Muslim rites, but whose real faith still shows was, however, not an effectively centralized strong traces of Old Java’s religious outlook. In empire, since the Army was organized 1955, the secular nationalists and theterritorially, right down to the village level, and Communists competed for the votes of the each predatory level created its own sources of ‘statistical’ Muslims, while active Muslim voters funds. Furthermore, most sizeable private were divided between traditionalists andenterprises were forced to accept ‘security modernists. units’, ostensibly to protect them from scarcely The post-election cabinet was necessarily existing labour unrest, but actually as agents of unstable, weak and incapable of halting the systematic, hierarchical extortion. spread of Outer Island warlordism whichBut this was by no means all. For the first two increasingly took on local ethno-linguistic decades of Suharto’s rule, military officers were features. Behind the scenes, the CIA, alarmed ‘parachuted’ into all the state ministries and by the Communists’ surprising electoralparastatals, and most important positions in the strength, and by President Sukarno’s anti- territorial civil bureaucracy were occupied by imperialist rhetoric, was looking towards a generals and colonels. The armed forces had a major rebellion which would get rid of Sukarno large, Suharto-selected bloc in Parliament, and and bring about an Army-backed right-wing dominated the electoral machine, Golkar, which regime. In March 1957, the country was put always won elections without difficulty. Perhaps under martial law. In the autumn negotiations most important of all, the officer corps was between the centre and the Outer Island essentially above the law. Not a single senior opposition broke down. officer was ever put on trial for corruption or At the same time, Sukarno, increasinglyabuse of power, let alone for murder. enraged by Dutch obstinacy in hanging on to Yet, as we have also seen, by the mid-1980s the West New Guinea, with American support, last of the revolution’s veterans had retired, decreed the nationalization of all Dutchreplaced by former cadets from the Military enterprises and the eviction of almost all Dutch Academy. They had adapted fully to the regime, citizens. The High Command, using its martial- but failed to produce a single moment of ‘glory’, law powers, took over the huge welter of Dutch and not one of the new generation of generals factories, banks, export–import firms, mines,enjoyed any independent public prestige. After shipping and plantations, and promptly moved Suharto’s fall, and Habibie’s ending of the old to immobilize the Communist-dominated trade order’s strict censorship, the mass media began

15 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF to be filled with devastating stories of military revolutionary period of constitutional malfeasance and brutality. democracy was abruptly dismissed as the The popular anti-military movement was briefly creation of civilian politicians, aping Western strong enough to get rid of the appointed rather than Indonesian ways. All this had some military bloc in Parliament, and restore much of comical aspects. For example, the brave but the bureaucracy to civilian hands. [11] But other hopeless Communist rebellion against the Dutch legacies of Suharto have remained. The officer colonial regime in 1926–27 was described as corps is still largely above the law, the territorial the first of a series of treasonable Communist organization of the Army has not been undone conspiracies culminating in October 1, 1965. and, after enormous losses in the 1997 financial In the decade after Suharto’s fall, some crisis, the soldiers have clung still more fiercely tentative rewriting of textbooks has occurred, to their extra-budgetary enterprises. But the but in general inertia prevails. Many once- drastic decline in the Army’s prestige and the banned books have been republished mediocre quality of its leadership appear to rule (anachronistically, in the Suharto spelling), but out for the foreseeable future any return to the market for these books is basically limited military rule. to students and intellectuals. The general National amnesia ignorance of the past is probably greater than Since the cultural legacy of Suharto is a vast at any time in the last century. and complicated matter, it makes practical The second, related, policy concerns Indonesia’s sense to focus here on just two crucial policy Chinese minority. Very soon after October 1, the initiatives. The first and most important was the regime’s media claimed that the masterminds introduction of a new spelling system for the of the failed ‘Communist coup’ had received a national language, inaugurated in 1972–73. large clandestine shipment of arms from the Officially, this policy was justified as a way toPRC, and that Party chairman D. N. Aidit had open up a common print market with Malaysia. acted at the behest of Peking. There followed But the real motive behind it was to mark a the sacking of the Chinese Embassy and the decisive break between what was written under suspension of diplomatic relations until 1990. the dictatorship and everything written before Under Sukarno, the only substantial political it. One had only to read the title of a book or organization for the Chinese minority, known as pamphlet to know whether it was splendidly Baperki, had been a strong supporter of the modern, or a derisory residue of Sukarnoism, President, who enjoyed excellent relations with constitutionalism, the revolution, or the colonial Peking. Baperki had also allied itself with the period. Any interest in old-orthographyCommunist Party and leftwing secular materials was automatically suspicious. The nationalists. This body was now prohibited, change was sufficiently great that youngstersmany of its leaders were imprisoned, and a could easily be persuaded that ‘old’ printed significant number of ordinary Chinese killed. materials were too hard to decipher, and so not Suharto followed this up by banning Chinese to be bothered with. [12] schools, any use of Chinese calligraphy, and the The effective result was a sort of historicalnear-compulsory changing of Chinese personal erasure, such that the younger generation’s names to more Indonesian-sounding knowledge of their country’s history came appellations. Needless to say, the rationale for largely from the regime’s own publications, all this was that the Chinese had to be better especially textbooks. Needless to say, the assimilated and become like other Indonesian decades of anti-colonial activity against the citizens. But in reality the Chinese were almost Dutch largely disappeared. The revolution was completely excluded from political power. renamed the War of Independence, in which Discrimination was rampant and systematic in only soldiers played significant roles. The post- the universities, the civil service and the armed

16 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF forces. Over the 32 years of the dictatorship, After Suharto? Politically the Chinese have no only one Chinese ever became a cabinet vehicle of their own, though they are financially minister, and this figure, appointed only twoimportant to all the large parties today. Only months before Suharto fell, was a notorious two Chinese, to my knowledge, have become crony. cabinet ministers. The more important of the On the other hand, on the economic–financialpair, Kwik Kian Gie, was quickly dismissed side, Suharto surrounded himself with a small because of his personal honesty and blunt group of Chinese tycoons who, in addition to attacks on corruption, in general, and the acting as his bagmen, built huge and successful activities of the tenacious Chinese cronies in business empires. (Some of these people, particular. Discrimination is still rife. Young sniffing the wind, began transferring theirChinese know even less about Indonesian assets to Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and history than their ‘native’ counterparts, and that elsewhere several years before the Crash of goes for the history of the Chinese in Indonesia 1997.) The policy suited the dictator’s book, as well. Many parents, still traumatized by their since he both respected Chinese acumen and experiences under the Suharto regime, try to knew that Chinese wealth could not besend their youngsters overseas to study, often converted into dangerous political power. with the dream of following them into ‘Native’ Indonesians were another story. permanent emigration. One remarkable Below the level of the cronies, the Chinese, development, however, is that there has been facing exclusion from most other options no significant anti-Chinese riot over the past ten beyond private medical and legal practice, years, which have otherwise seen a great deal concentrated energetically on commerce and of inter-ethnic and inter-religious bloodshed. I swelled the ranks of an already timid middle think that the ironic explanation is that the class. The concentration became so great that Chinese minority, maybe 1 per cent of the the old stigma of being ‘economic animals’ population and scattered around the became partly internalized. Yet there were a archipelago, is too small to matter in the open few impressive exceptions: Soe Hok Gie, a electoral politics where these larger conflicts prominent student opponent of the Communist are involved; under Suharto, with his tight Party and of Sukarno’s authoritarian populist control over the public sphere, the Chinese rule, was the one and only person in the late were regarded as the least dangerous targets 1960s to denounce in public the massacres of for social anger and resentment. 1965–66; the Protestant lawyer Yap Thiam Hien Children of 1965 was so courageous in defence of human rights The Communist Party, as we have observed, that he ultimately became a national icon. Dede was completely destroyed— physically, Oetomo, on returning from graduate study in politically and morally. Among the elderly America, was brave enough to announce that survivors of years of imprisonment there is no he was ‘gay’, and over two decades tirelessly agreement on what actually happened in 1965 worked to help HIV/AIDS victims and to enhance or who should be held responsible. No one, not the civic rights of gays, lesbians andeven overseas, has attempted to write a serious transsexuals. The playwright Riantiarno dared account of post-revolutionary Party history. Up to compose and stage politically coloured plays till today, former members of any Communist- and musicals, though these were soon shut controlled organization and their families have down. Nonetheless Suharto’s policies made the to carry ID marking this stigma. Most are very Chinese more vulnerable than ever to popular poor, having lost all their property after 1965. envy and hatred, and Suharto’s fall was marked They are barred from many significant by savage anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta and the occupations, educational institutions, the old royal city of Surakarta. bureaucracy and parliament.

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To the very end of the Suharto regime, its traditionalist Islamic sector and female survivors military and intelligence services continued to from the Communist side. Muslims listened warn, in menacing terms, of a ‘latentsympathetically to the elderly Communists talk Communist Party’, and more idiosyncratically, of about their sufferings in 1965 and after. All went a dangerous ‘organization without organization’. well till one of the victims started to describe in Seemingly oblivious, even today, of the collapse detail how and where she was raped and of the Soviet Union and the Communist regimes tortured. At this point one of the younger in Eastern Europe, and of the delirious success Muslim women stood up ashen-faced, stuttered of the ‘capitalist-roaders’ in China, right-wing a few unintelligible words, and fainted. It turned generals and ‘modernist’ Muslim organizations out later that from the account she could continue to rant about Communist conspiracies. identify the sadist—he was her father. When this interminable Hetze will end no one It is possible, indeed likely, that Wahid, a very knows. shrewd politician, took his initiatives with the But there are some interesting things occurring, idea of getting votes from ex-Communist nonetheless. During his brief presidency at the families. [13] He knew that the modernist beginning of our century, Abdurrahman Wahid, Muslims and the residual electoral machine of the maverick and charismatic leader ofSuharto have no interest—to say the least—in ‘traditionalist’ Muslims, spoke out strongly for this constituency. He also believed that the reconciliation à la Mandela and the end of reborn secular nationalist party, assuming that stigmatization. He even asked Parliament to the victims had nowhere else to go, felt they remove the constitutional ban on Marxism and needed to make no appeals or concessions. Marxist writings. His many enemies made sure Their party leader, Megawati (the wags call her that this request was rejected, but the ban is no Miniwati), Sukarno’s daughter, has repudiated longer seriously enforced. One can findher in father’s ideological legacy and displays a bookshops today many texts about Marxism, thoroughly petty-bourgeois conservative and by dead Communists, including D. N. Aidit outlook. All this means is that there is no who was summarily executed forty-three years serious political party representing anything ago. Suharto’s fall has opened the way for a remotely left. Nor is there any immediate good many publications claiming—sometimes chance that this situation will change, especially with evidence, sometimes on the basis of given today’s international environment. rumour and mystical signs—that the real The old social base of the Communist Party has mastermind of October 1, 1965 was Suharto changed greatly over the past forty years. The himself. These circulate quite freely. factory-based work-force has become—for well- The most surprising development has emerged known reasons—heavily feminized and based in an unlikely place—among young intellectuals on short-term employment contracts. and social activists from ‘traditional Islam’, who Organizing is very limited, and the old social in many ways are showing themselves to be far divide along quasi-religious lines remains. more modern than the ‘modernists’. Taking a Corporatist mentalities are still dominant in the cue from Wahid, they can be found, even in bureaucracy. It is probably telling that the work- remote rural areas, visiting and helpingforce’s one modern hero has been a heroine, a impoverished old Communists and theirbrave East Javanese trade unionist who was families. They say they are doing this work as a raped and murdered by the local military for her kind of atonement for the conspicuous and persistent and vocal opposition to her ferocious role that their elders played in the employers and their ‘security units’. The 1965 massacres. Not long ago, a friendly peasants are still there, but population meeting was held in the old Republican capital pressure, landgrabbing and the alluring of Jogjakarta between women from thesuggestions of the mass media have brought

18 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF huge numbers, especially of the young and traditional aura. During the 1965–66 massacres, active, into the cities. Peasant organizations are the occupational group that was proportionately small and weak. In the late Suharto era and in hardest hit consisted of just such primary and the first years after the dictator’s fall, theresecondary schoolteachers. Their emergency were many enthusiastic and idealisticreplacements were a mass of uninterested, NGOs—tolerated, up to a point, by theunqualified placemen and placewomen who authorities because of their small size. But the wanted a civil service job at all costs, and, of return of political parties to power, and the course, were completely loyal to the regime successful holding of a series of free elections that hired them. It was this phalanx that really since 1999, has lured manyNGO staffers into brought the pervasive miasma of civil servant- mainstream party-political careers. Others are style corruption into schools—bribery, ‘tea- too dependent on ignorant and trend-happy money’, embezzlement of school budgets and ‘sponsors’ in the North to be capable of much so on. creative work. This generation has finally retired, but they are Quiescence? responsible for recruiting their successors. (I It says something that, in 2007, Indonesia was have often asked young people which of their often cited as Southeast Asia’s most open and high-school teachers they remember with either democratic society. The competition was not affection or admiration. Typically, the reaction is heavy: Thailand under military rule,incredulity at my naïveté.) Suharto had no time interminable authoritarian regimes in Burma, for students, but he encouraged the spread of Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore; and the hundreds of diploma mills to sop up appallingly corrupt and violent regime of Gloria unemployment. Even in the better universities, Arroyo-Macapagal in the Philippines. With the teacher absenteeism has long passed the time melancholy help of the tsunami, peace has when it was remarked on: sidelines, real-estate come to Acheh, and an intelligent, peaceable speculation, boondoggling state-financed former rebel is now its governor. Perhaps ‘research projects’ are the usual lures. There is exhausted by the bloodshed of previous years, no better evidence of Suharto’s educational the Moluccas are fairly calm. Concessions have legacy than that the political elite sends even its been made to the Papuans. The important stupidest and most anti-social children to be decentralization law, passed by Parliament at tamed and tutored overseas. This does not the height of the short wave of ‘reform’ that mean that the country lacks a lot of very followed Suharto’s fall, has shifted power and intelligent youngsters, but many of them are money to the regional elites whom cynics dub part autodidacts, more dependent on each mini-Suhartos. Islamic extremism is a spent other and the internet than on their teachers. force. The press is pretty free, though mostly One of Winston Churchill’s more acerbicbons conservative. mots was ‘While there is death there is hope’. Yet there is one other phenomenon that needs Every year, the number of young people who to be noted. Indonesia’s educational system only remember dimly or not at all what today is mostly a dreary swamp. Up until Suharto’s Neues Ordnung was like grows apace. perhaps the early 1960s, primary andIt is nice that, after half a century, Pramoedya secondary schoolteachers were, even ifAnanta Toer has found a successor. The young miserably paid, respected local figures, partlySundanese Eka Kurniawan has published two for their energetic role in overcomingastonishing novels in the past half-decade. [14] widespread illiteracy, and partly for theIf one considers their often nightmarish plots contributions many had made to the colonial- and characters, one could say there is no hope. era nationalist movement. The everyday word But the sheer beauty and elegance of their for ‘teacher’, guru, still had an impressive language, and the exuberance of their

19 6 | 6 | 0 APJ | JF imagining, give one the exhilaration of watching with its eyes on the huge underwater oil fields the first snowdrops poke their little heads upspotted off the island of Timor. towards a wintry sky. [6] The psychology behind this astounding Benedict Anderson is the author of accumulation is an interesting puzzle. Suharto’s Imagined Communities. Reflections on personal tastes were quite simple, and he did the Origins and Spread of Nationalism not keep an expensive stable of mistresses. He was visibly uncomfortable in foreign countries, and an authority on Indonesian politics and one cannot imagine him settling down with and culture. He is professor emeritus of the loot in Los Angeles or the Riviera. He seems Government at Cornell and an editor of to have thought of himself as a good New Left Review. The original article is paterfamilias, spoiling his children, especially available at New Left Review 50, March- his eldest daughter and his youngest son April, 2008. Posted on June 9, 2008. ‘Tommy’, who did luxury time in prison (after his father’s fall) for arranging the assassination of a Supreme Court judge who annoyed him. In the liberal 1950s, the maverick Sumatran politician Muhammad Yamin cheerfully explained why, as a cabinet minister, he had [1] I would like to record my gratitude to my ordered the purchase of pianos for every school friends Ben Abel and Joss Wibisono for very in the country: he wanted comfortable lives for helpful comments and criticisms. his descendants ‘to the seventh generation’. [2] An acronym for Pembela Tanah AirThere is a general belief in Indonesia that even (Defenders of the Motherland), the name the canny Chinese can rarely stay rich for three expressed the Japanese plan to hitch local generations. Children and grandchildren, used nationalism to the defence of the Empire. There to luxury, and the usual vices, quickly fritter is a clear parallel with the almostaway the family fortune. It is possible that contemporaneous Japanese creation of the Suharto was thinking how much money would Burma Independence Army to help fight against have to be accumulated to fund his own brood’s the British. frittering over seven generations. [3] The massacres were mainly aimed at the [7] The regime had officially insisted that these Communists’ mass bases, easily identified since clearly military-style murders were the result of the Party had been legal since independence, turf wars between gangs. The popularon dit and actively participated in electoral politics. had it that most of these small gangsters were These bases were, numerically speaking, election-enforcers in the pay of General Ali concentrated in the rural areas of Central and Murtopo, Suharto’s longtime personal political East Java and Bali, and in the plantation belt of spy-chief, who was getting too big for his boots, North Sumatra. The cities were less severely hit, and was soon exiled as Ambassador to Kuala probably because they were more easily Lumpur where he died of a stroke. controlled, [8] Under the constitution, such as it was, the [4] 50 Tahun Merdeka dan Problemapresidents of Indonesia were not chosen by Tapol/Napol (50 Years of Independence and the popular vote, but by the Supreme People’s Problem of Political Prisoners), published by Consultative Assembly, composed of all Masyarakat Indonesia untuk Kemanusiaan, members of Parliament, plus a phalanx of Jakarta 1995, p. 591. representatives of various regions and [5] Suharto was soon treated like royalty by the functional groups, selected by . . . the president. UK, whose arms dealers profited mightily from This was handy for Suharto, who had no talent trade with Indonesia. Australia followed suit, on the stump. The system was only changed

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five years ago. The current president, (retired) President) that the Chinese New Year, locally General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is the first known as Imlek, would henceforth be a national to be directly elected by the Indonesian voters. holiday. For most of the Suharto period, public [9] Slater has written a theoreticallycelebrations of Imlek were prohibited. It may sophisticated and often very amusing account have surprised Wahid that this decree was of top-level politics in Indonesia since Suharto: hugely successful, not only among the Chinese ‘Indonesia’s Accountability Trap: Party Cartels but especially among young non-Chinese and Presidential Power after DemocraticIndonesians. One cannot doubt that here the Transition’, Indonesia, 78, October 2004. influence of films from Hong Kong, Taiwan and [10] Their boss, explaining a later visit to the more recently the PRC, and of advertising, Great Satan at state expense, averred he was soaps and travelogues on television, has played only going to see his children, comfortably a big role. What in the 1950s was seen as the ensconced in lesser Californian universities. It is cultural expression of an often disliked local ethnic group is now seen as part of a general also characteristic of these Muslim thugs that culture of the spectacle and of tourism. It was they never showed the slightest interest in the common in the old days for wealthy Chinese to plight of the famously devout Achehnese. hire young and poor non-Chinese to dance the [11] This success was possible in part because famous lion-dance. The practice has been of the support of the political parties, eager to revived, but in a ‘Mardi Gras’ spirit of festive fill the parliamentary seats vacated by the fun. soldiers. [14] Eka, a great admirer of Pramoedya, wrote a [12] From the end of the 19th century the first-class academic thesis, since published, on colonial regime had tried with mixed success to the older writer’s complex relationship with create a standard orthography for‘socialist realism’. The two novels are Cantik Itu Malay/Indonesian based on Dutch orthographic Luka [‘Beautiful’, a Wound] (2002) and Lelaki rules. The Revolutionary government adopted a Harimau [Man Tiger] (2004). The first is a huge, simplified form of this colonial spelling system rather unwieldy, surreal recapitulation of the by substituting, quite sensibly, ‘u’ for the odd past century of Indonesian history set in a sort Dutch ‘oe’. A simple example will show what of isolated Macondo somewhere on the south Suharto’s New Improved Spelling achieved: ‘I coast of Java. The second is a brilliant, tight-knit am looking for a special jacket’, once saja tjari and frightening village tragedy, also set djas chusus, became saya cari jas khusus. somewhere on that barren littoral. I understand [13] Probably, a comparable calculation lay that both novels are starting to be translated behind his spectacular decree (when still into other languages.

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