CONCEPT – INDONESIAN PRESIDENT SUHARTO (1968-’98)

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CONCEPT – INDONESIAN PRESIDENT SUHARTO (1968-’98)

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• The personality and the rule: Suharto (1921 – 2008, Jakarta) was an army officer and political leader who became the president of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. This uninterrupted rule is claimed to have given Indonesia the much-needed political stability and sustained economic growth, but his authoritarian regime fell due to an economic downturn and massive corruption.
• Personal details: As per a Javanese tradition, Suharto used only his given name, without a surname. After graduating from high school and working briefly as a bank clerk, he joined the Dutch colonial army and then, after the Japanese conquest in 1942, switched to a Japanese-sponsored home defense corps. With Japan’s surrender in 1945, he fought in the guerrilla forces seeking independence from the Dutch.
• The Indonesian Republic: It became a republic in 1950, and Suharto had distinguished himself as a battalion commander in central Java. In 15 more years he rose steadily through the ranks of the Indonesian army, becoming a  major general in 1962. The President was Sukarno, but the army was strongly anti-communist.
• Coup in Jakarta, 1965: On September 30, 1965, a group of disgruntled left-wing army officers and some political leaders tried to seize power in Jakarta, killing six of the army’s seven senior generals. Suharto escaped, and, as head of the strategic command, he led the army in crushing the coup within a few days. Sukarno was suspected of complicity in the coup, and power now began to shift to the army. Soon, Suharto directed a purge of communists and leftists in public life, and lacs were killed by angry mobs across Indonesia.
• Suharto takes charge: As the army chief of staff, he took effective control of the Indonesian government on March 12, 1966, though Sukarno remained nominal president. Suharto formed new policies to stabilize the country’s economy and political life, which had approached the brink of chaos in the last years of Sukarno’s rule. In March 1967 the People’s Consultative Assembly (the national legislature) appointed Suharto acting president, and in March 1968 it elected him to a five-year term as president. That was an authoritarian regime, which lasted till 1998.
• Election sham: His government-sponsored political party, Golkar, repeatedly scored electoral victories to the People’s Consultative Assembly, and that body in turn reelected Suharto unopposed to the presidency in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998. Civil liberties were restricted, and little dissent was tolerated.

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