The Future Will Be Kinder To Suharto

For most people, former Indonesian president Suharto will be remembered for his regime’s hugely autocratic rule and large-scale corruption. But many others cannot avoid recalling him as someone who brought stability to an ethnically fractured nation and then fired it off on a trajectory of economic progress.
The man must be measured in accordance with his times. In October 1965, Gen. Suharto led the army against an abortive communist coup. Some 500,000 communist sympathizers were reportedly killed in the subsequent mopping-up operations.
The following year he took control from the nation’s founder, Sukarno, becoming president in March 1968. The policy implications were striking. Gen. Suharto revoked Sukarno’s anti-American policy and switched to an anticommunist posture that found favor in Washington.
Suharto’s free-market policies pushed Indonesia’s industrialization and the country became a principal member of Southeast Asia. He also ordered his army to invade East Timor, although the full story of how that event fit into the wider Cold War geopolitics remains to emerge.
Under his regime, many anti-government activists were killed. Countless opposition politicians disappeared. It’s hard to believe Suharto ever considered his regime democratic. The man must be judged from that standpoint. And in an important way, he was.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997 put the Indonesian economy on the brink of collapse. Once prosperity seemed to vanish, public anxiety morphed into a pro-democracy movement. After Suharto stepped down, Indonesia held democratic elections to the legislature and the presidency. It is a democracy in the full conventional sense of the term.
How about the kleptomania? Last year, the World Bank reported that Suharto’s government had stolen up to $35 billion from state coffers. Suharto consistently denied involvement in corruption and a court declared him too ill to stand a corruption trial in 2000. While he was never officially charged with stealing state funds, Suharto could never clear his name either.
Corruption and gross human rights violations will remain an inextricable part of Suharto’s legacy. Future historians would certainly be kinder while appraising his wider record.