INDONESIA: State funeral for former President Suharto
Updated
A state funeral has been held in Central Java for Indonesia's former President and dictator Suharto, who died on Sunday at the age of 86. Earlier this morning Suharto's coffin was taken from Jakarta to his hometown near the eastern city of Solo, where it was farewelled by huge crowds. Indonesians are in a week of mourning for the man who ruled them with an iron fist for 32 years. Despite tributes flowing in from regional and world leaders, Suharto's legacy will receive a mixed review from Indonesia-watchers. While he presided over a flourishing economy before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Suharto years were also plagued by corruption, nepotism and brutality.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Professor Robert Elson Suharto biographer, and Professor of South East Asian History at the University of Queensland.
ELSON: In some places in Indonesia, especially places like Papua and Aceh, and of course, in the now-independent East Timor, his legacy will be one of unremitting repression and brutality amongst many people. For many other Indonesians however, it will be a rather different view. It's Suharto they think, that provided them with a security and stability, and a chance to earn a more propserous living - something they'd never experienced before, which they'd most prized, and which they see as Suharto's gift to them.
LAM: And do you see that as Suharto's greatest legacy - the fact that he gave the poor a chance?
ELSON: Well, undoubtedly, I think in his rather mixed legacy, it's his focus on economic development, that will be the thing that most Indonesians remember him for. We have to take ourselves back to the mid-1960s and think just how chaotic and just what a shambles Indonesia was in the period from about 1962 to 1965, with the economy spiralling out of control, with politics in a continual state of uproar.
LAM: Indeed, that was also the period of the confrontation - the konfrontasi - with Malaysia?
ELSON: Yes, konfrontasi, yes, both in domestic and in foreign policy, Sukarno's late legacy, notwithstanding his earlier contributions to Indonesia, was, as I say, chaotic. He withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations, there was a confrontation with Malaysia, there was the forced or threatened invasion of Papua, if the Dutch refused to hand back the territory...
LAM: Do you think Indonesians also saw as his strength - the fact that he kept Indonesia together - to stop the so-called "Balkanisation" of Indonesia?
ELSON: Yes, that's certainly one of his greatest contributions to the Indonesian nation, and one of the things for which we as Australians probably should be most, er, most generous towards Suharto, because he was fixedly for a unified Indonesia. He wouldn't tolerate, he wouldn't hear of any efforts to diminish that unity, which was of course one of the major points of the earlier nationalism message. He was an unremitting nationalist.
LAM: And of course, people also, when they speak of Suharto, they can't forget the terrifying time during the New Order regime, when critics and people perceived to be threats "disappeared." Do you think the abuses still register on the Indonesian psyche, ten years after Suharto was ousted?
ELSON: In some places, they certainly do. In other places, yes, as well, but in much more guarded ways. For instance, in Java, where many of the perhaps half a million people massacred in (19) 65, 66 still have; there're still relatives who remember that. There's a certain subdued fear about that. But that's being pushed into the background, people have tended to "misremember" or "unremember" those kinds of events, and compsensated for it, but talking to themselves about the kind of economic prosperity and security, which the Suharto regime brought.
LAM: What about Suharto the man? He was known in some circles as the "smiling general." He was a quiet, unassuming man, was he?
ELSON: He was very quiet, he was undemonstrative, he was boring in many respects, if you listen to many of his speeches - sometimes, some of them went on for hours, and they're exceedingly dull. People often contrasted the witty, evocative and fiery speech-making of his predecessor, Sukarno, with this dull, pedestrian, "ends-means rationality" kind of Suharto. He was indeed, personally, a rather abstemious individual - kept to himself very much, he never revealed much of his inner self. Many of his cabinet ministers who'd worked with him for many years, they never knew what went on behind those eyes and that smiling face. But they feared it. They feared it. He was a man of great intelligence, but not an intellectual, and he frightened them sometimes with his mental command of their own briefs. And he often had a habit of reminding them of things they'd promised, or things they'd forgotten to add, in the course of their presentation to cabinet.
