However, what interests me most is not the conventional ‘dictator in winter’ catalogue of extravagances and abuses. Indeed, he used his power to transform his family into the wealthiest in Indonesia (the state paid them to, among other things, have a monopoly on the toll roads and build the Indonesian equivalent of Epcot Center), an incidental backlight to the soap opera leading up to this death as his family and former military/political associates sought to leverage the attorney general to drop his $1.4 billion embezzlement suit (the criminal suit was thrown out a few years ago on the grounds he was mentally unfit). Moreover, for both victims and families, the blood on his hands is indisputable, as he was responsible for the ‘anti-communist’ purge of the late 1960s when the military used religious and anti-Chinese instigations to spur villagers into a campaign of mass murder that left more than 3 million dead (as an aside, the NY Times figure of 500,000 deaths is accepted by largely no one; Suharto’s own generals bragged that it was at least 3 million). In addition, Suharto held hundreds of thousands of political prisoners for decades without trial, and permitted his military to commit wholesale atrocities in East Timor and Aceh. He also fostered, as a bulwark for his political control, the rampant corruption that even today plagues average Indonesians by stunting foreign investment and devouring economic gains.
And yet, despite tragedy without seeming limit, what interests me most about Suharto is the almost mystic caché that the ‘smiling general’ still has for Indonesians. In fact, in my opinion, the chief debate among most Indonesians contends not if Suharto was a bad person or if he engineered all the killing that went on in the paddies of Java under the pretense of smoking out the communists (when Suharto came to power Indonesia had the largest communist party outside the Soviet Union), but whether Suharto should be forgiven. Considering that the closest this man ever came to an apology was ‘I am sorry for my mistakes,’ upon stepping down in 1998 as the economy unraveled and the cities burned, it says much more about how Indonesia as a culture relates to authority than the transgressions of that authority against the culture.
Suharto was the quintessential Indonesian leader in that he was stepped in a cultural Javanism that prioritizes deference to authority over virtually everything else, including right and wrong.
To me, Javanism, as the embracing and practice of the culture and beliefs of Java, represents a search for harmony, both individually and with the world. It is heavily informed by the heavy social stratification (and relationships of deference) that has long existed in Indonesia. In constant communion with the absolute powers of the spiritual world (heavy shades of Hinduism), but with a distinctly Indonesian/islander ‘take it easy’ (tidak apa-apa) approach, personal autonomy almost ceases to exist. The maxim that I think best sums it up is, "God is within you. God is everywhere. But do not think you are God." In reality this often manifests itself in an uncritical deference to all concerns spirutal, authoritative, and powerful, from children and parents to constituents and leaders.
Suharto styled himself as a Javanese king, complete with mystics, pilgrimages to power spots, and spiritual charms (including midgets and albino water buffalo). In a country where one can ascend to power based upon the irresistible force of the ‘flaming womb’ or wahyu (which Suharto’s wife, a member of the sultanate of Solo, possessed), power is an occult equation. Present day Indonesia is a product of the patronage systems that predated it, from the great kingdoms of Java where the king ruled, over a stratified rice-driven society, through the mandate of the spirit world until his verve fled him for another, to 250 years of Dutch colonialism, where the economic system colonial officials encountered so closely resembled middle age feudalism that the Dutch East Indies company simply bought off the courtiers and told them to handle everything else. Part of the reason that Indonesia is so corrupt today is that Suharto, through both moment and resources, was able to fuse this old style patronage with a modern, commodity driven, economic system.
As I have most likely said before, and hopefully is somewhat clear from all this, the fundamental Enlightenment ideas of the individual have yet to truly reach Indonesia. This is why, for me, if the passing of Suharto says anything about Indonesia’s future it will be if a piece of old style Javanism (in the public sense) dies with the old man. Will Indonesia finally have a new breed of leader? When Suharto stepped down there were numerous eye witness reports that claimed to see his wahyu fly across the sky to the South, the cardinal direction of soon to be President Megawati.
It is unreasonable to expect any sort of great public or legal accounting for the Suharto legacy because, unfortunately but quite practically, the 1998 purge of Indonesia’s political system was a mere decapitation, leaving behind all of the politicos, generals, and bureaucrats who owe their careers to the general. The wounds inflicted by violence, repression, and intellectual castration may fade but will never disappear. Instead, it remains to be seen whether his death will finally shatter the spell and release Indonesians from their centuries old rapture.
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On Sunday, shortly after his death, heavy rains and winds engulfed the hillside outside Solo where Suharto was laid to rest, beside his wife, on Monday and a localized earthquake occurred outside Yogyakarta, very near the place of his birth.
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