SOEHARTO

This is the name that creates “a love and hate” mood in Indonesia. Yes, Soeharto is indeed unique in a sense that during his 32-year rule, Indonesia could develop in a relatively stable situation and with “fantastic” records of annual economic growth. But, young people in general felt that they did not have greater space to channel their voice freely due to the absence of press freedom and freedom of speech. The record of human rights violations was also relatively bad under the New Order regime. A lot of outspoken Indonesians, whose voices and views were different from those in power, were jailed and some were murdered because they were perceived as threats for the regime. The Soeharto regime promoted “oneness in views” about the state ideology in accordance with the regime’s understandings through a compulsory upgrading program of what was then well known as P4 (Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila). Students, military personnel, teachers, civil servants, journalists, etc participated in these upgrading sessions to make sure that they did memorize points of the Pancasila values available in text books that the government had prepared. During the P4 upgrading process, none could expect constructive dialog. What only existed was “monologue”. The participants did look like “zombies”.

Apart from that, the economic life of the nation was relatively managed so that prices of fuel and staple food remained affordable and stable. The existence of the government was indeed felt by the people. Whether the absence of press freedom had caused people at large not to get accessed to free flow of information on what was really going on in the archipelago, public seldom heard about the sectarian and inter-ethic conflicts, like what we saw in Kalimantan and Maluku islands. The separation of East Timor from the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia was impossible under Soeharto. The reputation of Indonesia in international arena was also high. This archipelagic nation was not only well respected in ASEAN but also in many other international organizations such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of Islamic Conference, and the United Nation. Moreover, neighbors, like Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, might think twice or more times to undermine Indonesia. The UN had even honored this 86-year-old man for his government’s success in changing Indonesia from its position as an importer of rice into that of self-sufficient nation. I think I was one of Indonesians who were happy with the honor at that time. However, this success ended so fast and had never come back again until now. The economic foundation that he built with billions of US dollar that we borrowed from donor countries and donor organizations were no more than a “bubble” when the 1998 Asian crisis came.

Over these past few days, Indonesian elites and ordinary people are again involved in a bitter discourse about how to treat this second Indonesian president regarding his alleged corruption cases. The public debate spread shortly after he was admitted to Pertamina Central Hospital (RSPP) on January 4, 2008. Actually, three years ago, Hidayat Nur Wahid, incumbent chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), had warned the nation of not being handcuffed by the past so that the nation failed to build the future. In resolving the Soeharto case, Nur Wahid argued that the legal approach remained needed but the values of statesmanship of the Indonesian leader to pardon Soeharto was a very human act due to the former president’s past merits to the nation.