Suharto as I knew him
THE AUSTRALIAN
JANUARY 28, 2008 12:00AM
THE death of Suharto in Jakarta last night, at the age of 86, will give rise to different evaluations of his contribution to Indonesia, to the Southeast Asian region and to Australian-Indonesian relations.

I first met Suharto when I visited Indonesia with prime minister William McMahon in 1972. I last met him in 1997 as chairman of the Australia-Indonesia Institute.

In the intervening quarter of a century I had the opportunity over numerous meetings to assess the man, his leadership qualities and his contribution to his country and to our shared neighbourhood.

I always found Suharto polite and congenial. While cautious about expressing views until he had reflected on a situation and shaped them in his own mind, and regarded by many as taciturn, I found that once he knew you, he was friendly, relaxed and willing to listen. He also articulated his own views clearly, especially his vision for Indonesia.


In conversations he smiled frequently. In fact he was known in Merdeka Palace circles as the "smiling general".

Behind that engaging smile there was, however, a firm resolve. Paul Keating once said to him at a meeting on November 15, 1997, that he had told some other APEC leaders that he, Suharto, "was as tough as old boots". He was. He stood by his friends and stuck firmly to his views once they were formed.

Suharto was not an intellectual but he was shrewd and knew what he did not know. Knowing little about an economy that was in chaos in 1965, he chose civilian Berkeley University-educated economists (widely known as the Berkeley Mafia) to rescue the economy. These key economic ministers included Professor Widjojo, Ali Wardhana, Professor Sadli and Emil Salim.

Suharto was also reliable. If he said he would do something, it would be carried out. As Singapore's former prime minister and present minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew described him, Suharto was "a man of his word". Lee also recognised the major contribution Suharto made to regional stability in Southeast Asia during the 1970s and 80s.

Suharto, like most Javanese, played his cards close to his chest. I recall once having a private discussion with the governor of Central Java, Soepardjo, who had become a good friend. It was shortly before the 1996 presidential election. I asked Soepardjo who he thought was most likely to be nominated by Suharto as his vice-president. I always remember his reply.

"Dick," he said, "as you know, the president and I have been comrades in arms. I have been a trusted friend for many years. I am the governor of the president's province, the most populous province in Indonesia, Central Java. I spent an hour with the Bapak yesterday. It was an empat mata (four eyes only) meeting. We discussed the current state of politics. Yet I left that meeting with no idea who he might nominate in just a few days' time. I know him as well as anybody but I could read nothing in his expression."

It is hardly surprising that Suharto was sometimes misunderstood by Australian leaders.

In January 1976 I accompanied foreign minister Andrew Peacock on a call on the president. Peacock said he wanted to raise with Suharto the possibility of a UN force in East Timor following Indonesia's invasion the previous month.

I advised him against doing so on the grounds that it would not be prudent to present an important new idea to the president without some prior notification, preferably through his colleague, the Indonesian foreign minister. Peacock ignored this advice as, of course, he was entitled to do and towards the end of the conversation he made this proposal to the president. Suharto's face was an impassive mask. When Peacock finished, he simply nodded.

In the car after the call, Peacock said: "You see, he agreed."

"No," I replied. "Suharto's nod was not a nod indicating assent. It was a Javanese nod, which simply means I have heard what you have said." A few days later, the proposal for a UN force was officially rejected.

Probably because of his army training, Suharto was somewhat hierarchical and conscious of status. For example, he declined, as head of state of Indonesia, to receive Sir Ninian Stephen when he wanted to visit Indonesia in 1986. Suharto acknowledged Queen Elizabeth II as Australia's head of state, not the governor-general. In Suharto's eyes, Sir Ninian was her representative.

Suharto, like many Javanese, was attracted to mysticism. One of his confidants and spiritual advisers was Sudjono Humardani. Before taking a major decision Suharto would often meditate with Sudjono, occasionally at a special cave on the Dieng Plateau to which, incidentally, he took Gough Whitlam in a rare gesture in 1974.

Strident criticism, especially from the political Left, of Suharto as a brutal, corrupt military dictator ruling an expansionist Indonesia has always been exaggerated.

Suharto was certainly authoritarian and relied on the armed forces for support. He was also pragmatic, secular and opposed to Islamic extremism. I was surprised to find when I arrived in Jakarta as our ambassador in 1975 that there were a disproportionate five Christians in the cabinet.

On a farewell call shortly before my return to Australia in 1978, Suharto asked me to remind Australian ministers that the threat to his government and to Indonesia's stability came not from any recrudescence of the Indonesian Communist Party but from Islamic fundamentalism, especially if it were to secure external support.

One of Suharto's main contributions to Indonesian stability was in fact to maintain religious tolerance which has, regrettably, broken down since he was ousted.

Far from being expansionist, the whole thrust of Suharto's foreign policy after 1966 was to regain the confidence of the West and of his neighbours, especially Singapore and Malaysia, following Sukarno's erratic anti-Western policy and his Konfrontasi against the establishment of Malaysia.

He saw Indonesia as the successor state to Dutch colonial possessions in Southeast Asia. Indonesia had always acknowledged Portuguese sovereignty over East Timor.

It was only after the breakdown of Portuguese decolonisation policy in 1974-75 and when the prospect emerged of a left wing, independent but aid-dependent mini-state within the Indonesian archipelago, at the height of the Cold War, that he agreed to his military advisers' firm recommendations that the colony must be incorporated, if necessary by force.

In the light of the civil war that had erupted and Portugal's abandonment of its colony in 1975, he first authorised covert Indonesian involvement and then the invasion on December 6. His motivation was not territorial expansion. It was national security. In other circumstances his clear preference was for the peaceful political integration of East Timor when it was decolonised.

In 1964, when I visited Indonesia from Singapore, where I was Australian commissioner, I could sense the coming social explosion that brought the then little known Major General Suharto to power. At that time, 70 per cent of Indonesia's population lived below the UN poverty line. Per capita income was only $US74. Less than 50 per cent of primary school-age children were in school.

Thirty years later, those living below the poverty line had been reduced to 14 per cent. Per capita income had risen to $US997 (a more than 13-fold increase) and a large middle class had developed. Ninety-six per cent of primary school-aged children were in school. World Bank projections in 1995 (since overtaken by the unpredicted East Asian financial crisis in 1997) suggested Indonesia would be the world's fifth-largest economy by 2020.

Indonesia's stability and economic progress between 1975 and 1995 were indeed remarkable. No other developing country achieved comparable progress. Much of the credit for this transformation should be given to Suharto and his key civilian economic ministers. At the same time Indonesia had translated its progress into increased regional and international stature.

There was, of course, the dark side to his long presidency. Suharto demonstrated four principal flaws. First, he identified Indonesia's progress and stability with his own continuing leadership. He stayed too long. Had he stepped down in 1992 or even in 1997, history would, I believe, record his presidency more favourably than it now might. But he made no proper arrangements for an orderly succession, such as Tunku Abdul Rahman had made in Malaysia and Lee in Singapore.

Second, he was unresponsive to concerns about human rights. He acquiesced in the removal of those who stood in the way of what he considered was best for Indonesia or who were publicly opposed to his policies.

He also tolerated abuses of human rights by the armed forces, especially in East Timor, Aceh and Papua.

Third, he abandoned his earlier policy of gradual political liberalisation in favour of trying to consolidate his own power. This inhibited his ability to respond to legitimate popular aspirations and to manage growing pressures for change, especially in the 90s.

Suharto was not by nature a democrat. He saw democracy, especially in a developing country, as divisive and wasteful of talent. He had seen the first attempt fail under Sukarno. He believed that at Indonesia's stage of development the most appropriate form of government for a country of such size and diversity was a strong centralised administration. Otherwise national unity could not be maintained.

Democracy only worked, and even then not always efficiently, in Western societies with generally high levels of prosperity and education. He did not regard Indian democracy as likely to prove effective.

History is therefore likely to record that one of Suharto's major failures was that he did not nourish the institutions Indonesia would need in the future: namely an independent judiciary, a free press and, especially, representative political institutions. In fact, he undermined and prevented the evolution along these lines of the judiciary, the media and the parliament. When the economic crisis struck in 1997 and the political crisis in 1998, Indonesian institutions were too fragile to cope, a situation that prevails to this day and for which Suharto must take most of the responsibility.

Fourth, corruption, cronyism and nepotism increased substantially in the latter stages of his presidency.

In particular, he permitted his children to enrich themselves grossly by intruding into virtually all lucrative contracts and monopolies. This situation worsened after the death of his wife, Ibu Tien, in April 1996. A degree of restraint probably departed with her.

Turning to bilateral relations, Suharto was genuinely interested in Australia. I returned with him for his last visit for informal talks in Townsville in April 1975 with Whitlam. Suharto's positive approach to trade liberalisation and to Asia-Pacific economic co-operation was to be of great value to Australia.

When I called on him in April 1989 as Bob Hawke's special envoy to advance the idea of an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, he was cautious but supportive. His subsequent support was critical in securing the agreement of the other ASEAN countries to this major Australian initiative.

Later, in November 1994, as the host for the APEC leaders' meeting in Bogor, encouraged by prime minister Keating, Suharto again showed decisive leadership, as the president of one of the world's major developing countries, in committing Indonesia - and because of its influence - the other countries of Southeast Asia to the free trade agenda embodied in the Bogor Declaration and to a more open international trading system.

The Agreement on Mutual Security signed on December 18, 1995, was another area in which Suharto showed leadership in a way that was helpful to Australia and to regional security. It was a confidence-building measure and demonstrated to both the Australian and Indonesian communities that we had a shared interest in the security of our region. It was an important evolution of Hawke's belief that Australia must find its security "with and not against Indonesia".

It is a matter for regret that due to the mutual mishandling in Jakarta and Canberra of aspects of Timor policy in 1999, prime minister John Howard chose to describe the AMS as "irrelevant", which led regrettably toits abrogation by an angry president BJHabibie. This is an unfortunate episode because, both in Opposition in 1995 and later in office, the Howard government had strongly supported this agreement. It has since been replaced by a new agreement drafted by the Howard government.

Suharto's presidency spanned nine Australian prime ministers, from Robert Menzies to Howard. In November 1975, I conveyed a personal message from Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister to Suharto, stating that if elected he wished to develop the same close personal relationship with Suharto that Whitlam had built up. Suharto had a sense of humour and while he welcomed Fraser's attitude, he commented with a wry smile: "Many people in your country think of Indonesia as unstable. Malcolm Fraser will be the sixth Australian prime minister with whom I have dealt!"

Managing a chain of 13,600 islands, stretching the distance from Broome in Western Australia to Christchurch in New Zealand, with a population of about 230 million people composed of about 300 ethnic groups and speaking about 250 distinct languages, is by any standard a massive political challenge. It is one of the reasons why Australian prime ministers from Holt to Howard were impressed by Suharto's leadership.

I suspect that although there were important flaws in his presidency, Suharto's 32-year rule will be judged more objectively by future historians than it is likely to be now, especially in Australia.

Richard Woolcott has probably spent more time over the past 40 years with Suharto than any other senior Australian official. He was invited by The Australian to contribute this comment

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