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Noble of MM to visit Suharto in hospital

I WAS touched by the report, 'MM Lee flies to Jakarta to visit Suharto in hospital' (ST, Jan 14). The visit must have been a heartwarming one for the Suharto family.

Everybody loves a winner and I am sure that in the 30 years that Mr Suharto was President of the Republic of Indonesia, he had countless friends from around the world. However, when he faded into the sunset and his health deteriorated, his circle of friends must have shrunk.

It is indeed laudable and noble of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to take time off his busy schedule to fly to Jakarta to visit a critically-ill old friend. His visit must have been very comforting to Mr Suharto and his family.

The praises that MM Lee sang of the former leader when calling upon the Indonesian government not to be oblivious to the great contribution that Mr Suharto made to Indonesia and Asean were certainly words from his heart.

Although I was not there, I could visualise the expression and passion with which MM Lee urged the Indonesian government to honour Mr Suharto appropriately.

I am sure that all Singaporeans who had experienced Sukarno's Konfrontasi would agree with MM Lee that Mr Suharto deserves to be honoured.

He was responsible for overthrowing the Sukarno regime and the Partai Komunis Indonesia, thus ending the Konfrontasi and restoring peace and stability to the region. I know because I was serving in the police force during that turbulent period.

By visiting Mr Suharto in a Jakarta hospital, MM Lee has shown that he is no fair-weather friend.


Suharto deserves credit for Indonesia's economic progress

MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said of former Indonesian former president Suharto:

'Yes, there was corruption. Yes, he gave favours to his family and his friends. But there was real growth, real progress.'

When I heard MM Lee say this on television, I was deeply touched. I believe many Indonesians and non-Indonesians feel the same.

Finally, MM Lee's words broke the silence. Many people who feel the same as him will be happy that his words expressed their thoughts and that he spoke openly. Pak Suharto deserves great credit for Indonesia's economic progress and development.

In my job in the hotel industry, I have some interaction with local businessmen who depend on the high spending power of their Indonesian business partners. I came to realise that Indonesia, besides being one of the top tourist arrivals to Singapore, is also a major trading partner. Should the Indonesian economy collapse, it would impact on our country.

Hence, during the 1997 financial crisis, it was a wise decision for the Singapore Government to offer Indonesia a loan of $5 billion.

Working in the hotel industry, I tend to interact with hotel guests and casually exchange views. I enjoy hearing from them to understand their culture and thinking. On many occasions, I asked Indonesian guests questions like how they feel with Pak Suharto no longer at the helm. Most say they miss the days when Pak Suharto was their president.


Both letters are from today's ST Forum.

In case any of you have been living under a rock, former Indonesian president Suharto is currently in critical condition and is likely to pass on soon. He ruled Indonesia for 32 years, and left a mixed legacy, to say the least. While Indonesia did see tremendous economic growth during his time in power, and while it can be argued that he curbed the communist "menace" (this point is not something I agree with), he was also responsible, directly or indirectly, for millions of deaths - the chaos that led to his seizure of power in 1965, the invasion of East Timor in 1975 and (quite ironically), the near-collapse of the Indonesian economy during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, with attendant social chaos and ethnic violence that arguably stemmed from his misguided policies to sweep all conflicts under the rug rather than actively work to resolve them.

Which is why I find the stream of tributes in the Singapore media, and as you can see above, even common Singapore citizens, sickening. Not only do our media and countrymen display an almost wholesale ignorance of modern Southeast Asian history, they also showcase astonishing naivete. As is to be expected, the current focus is on MM Lee's visit to Suharto, which has been called "noble", and the tributes paid to Suharto emphasize his economic achievements.

Now, economic growth is all well and good, but it is not the be-all and end-all criterion of assessment for a leader's legacy. Suharto did take a failing Indonesian economy and turn it around spectacularly; however, this widely-trumpeted achievement should be put into perspective. Firstly, the Indonesian economy at the time he took over was in really dire straits. It would have been exceedingly difficult not to turn it around.

Secondly, Suharto might have promoted economic growth; he signally failed, however, to ensure economic equity. During his time in power, the rich-poor income divide in Indonesia was immense, and vast swathes of the population continued to live in abject poverty. Part of economic success is ensuring a reasonable degree of equity; in this, he failed.

Thirdly, at what cost did he achieve economic growth? Corruption during his time in power was endemic. MM Lee's quote above is a severe understatement. An overwhelmingly corrupt government is not a properly-functioning government, and so Suharto failed to create one. Instead, he perpetuated it by granting family and friends high government posts regardless of ability, and likely helped himself to the till as well, though there is no evidence for that. How can this be considered a success? How can Indonesia's economic transformation under Suharto then be considered an unqualified success?

But the most glaring condemnation of Suharto's rule comes from history itself. When the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis hit, Suharto's economic system proved unable to withstand the shock. The Indonesian economic fell into deep crisis and the country disintegrated into chaos and violence, so serious that the strongman himself was forced out of power. Obviously, he had not built a resilient enough structure, and the chaos and violence that accompanied the collapse must be a damning indictment of the social policies he enacted during his rule.

Let us next examine Suharto's rise to power. The assertion that Suharto saved Indonesia (some even say, the region) from Communism is shaky at best. First off, Sukarno was no communist, although it is true that the PKI played a very prominent role during his administration. However, the PKI was counterbalanced by the army, in which Suharto was a general, and the Islamic groups. To say that Suharto saved Indonesia from Communism is to say that Indonesia was in danger of falling to Communism in the first place - which it was not. Neither the anti-communist elements within the army nor the Muslim groups would have allowed that to happen, and they were certainly sufficiently powerful to prevent it - as, officially, they supposedly did anyway.

Which brings us to the alleged attempted Communist coup of 30 September 1965. The official version of events is all we have to go on, but it must be stressed that the event is still shrouded in mystery. Whether it was an actual coup attempt or a conspiracy to exterminate the communists is unclear at best. It should not be portrayed as definitely being a communist takeover attempt, and that Suharto the hero halted this attempt.

I would also have thought that, sixteen years after the Cold War ended, people would have stopped seeing things in terms of being better dead than red, and accept that Communism cannot necessarily be thought of as evil.

We must also, of course, bear in mind that half a million people died after the coup was crushed; a bloodbath of incredible proportions that is conveniently not mentioned by our local media. Is this a worthy price for "crushing" communism?

But the bloodbath Suharto is most famous for is not that one, but rather the invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999. Originally a Portuguese colony, East Timor declared its independence in 1975, only to almost immediately suffer a brutal and unprovoked invasion by the Indonesian army, which then proceeded to rule the territory with an iron fist for the next two decades. Up to 200,000 East Timorese may have died during that time (Amnesty International estimates); a full one-third of the island's population. Again, our media has neglected to mention this historical event at all.

This is all of course not to say that Suharto made no contributions during his time in power. He restored stability to the country after the precarious balancing act of the Sukarno era, ended Konfrontasi, nursed the Indonesian economy back to health and worked towards regional integration through ASEAN. But his legacy is most definitely not all positive, and it would be a grave injustice to the countless victims of his rule to see it that way. History is never that simple, though sometimes we might like it to be.

And thus, while remembering and honouring Suharto's contributions towards Indonesia in particular and Southeast Asia in general, we must also bear in mind the less savoury things he did. It is only fair to Suharto's victims, and Suharto himself, that we remember him this way.