Robert Woodrow

Remembering a Dying Dictator

Interviews with Indonesia’s long-time leader

Indonesia’s former president Suharto lies dying in a Jakarta hospital. The 86-year old long-time strongman (like most Javanese he has only one name) ruled with an iron fist for 31 years. When he was toppled in 1998 amid the financial chaos that erupted out of the Asian Economic Crisis, most Indonesians, though heartily tired of his authoritarian ways and disgusted by the venality of his family, felt a sense of unease about the departure of a man who had for so long given them political stability and a sense of security. They feared that the murderous sectarian-political violence that had brought him to power in 1967 might break out again. As it happened, Indonesia weathered the post-Suharto storms fairly comfortably, and four presidents later, the nation is enjoying relative peace and prosperity.

I traveled to Jakarta to interview Suharto for Asiaweek in 1986. The meeting had taken years of persistence, for the man was exceptionally averse to the foreign press. Resident foreign correspondents were amazed that my magazine had obtained the interview. Once it became known that the president had seen me, ministerial doors magically opened and I was able to speak to eight members of the cabinet. I came to the Suharto interview armed with a carefully prioritized list of questions about the economy and the political future, but after brief and cursory replies, he deflected them all so he could expound on his philosophy of life. As press interviews go, it could hardly be called a success, but it gave a glimpse into the character of the man who had dominated the headlines for so long, and who is doing so again on his deathbed.

The interview was arranged through his personal secretary and interpreter, who in a preliminary meeting a week earlier had told me, “His Excellency would like to invite you first to see his farm outside Jakarta because that’s where you’ll see his real character.” I went (see below.) Later, as I was leaving Suharto’s office in Jakarta’s presidential palace after the one-hour interview (the enormous room had a solid gold telephone and a giant Hindu idol) the president handed me a book on Indonesia in which he had written: “To the Mr. Robert Woodrow with the best wishes.” He also gave me a pack of kretek clove cigarettes embossed with the presidential crest (I don’t smoke so kept them as a souvenir and only threw them away years later when moving to a new home.)

My account of our meetings was published in Asiaweek May 4, 1986.

Soldier, Farmer, Philosopher

It is a side of his character rarely glimpsed. Millions know the president by his television presence - always polite, formal and softspoken. But here at his Tapos farm, President Suharto’s affable grassroots mien is as unrestrained and unmistakable as the pride in his agrarian origins. Present are youth leaders, three from each province, invited to the experimental farm for a personally conducted tour of cattle pens, milking machines and chaff-cutters he had a hand in designing. I have the opportunity, very rarely accorded, of observing in his cherished rustic milieu this leader of 167 million people, most of whom are farmers.

”To be sure of ovulation,” he instructs his respectful audience, poking his walking stick at a bovine nether end, “place the back of your hand, never the palm, lightly against the cow’s membrane here where it swells and reddens. With practice you can detect small temperature changes.” On 200 hectares of the 751-hectare spread (the rest is farmed at nominal rent by neighbours) the president crossbreeds livestock suited to Indonesia’s climate and terrain. The calves are donated to villages to up-grade cattle gene pools. On the way to the model dairy, President Suharto points out a lam toro tree, a species he has been been avidly promoting. “It comes from the Philippines. This one is only five years old and look how tall it is. The leaves are good fodder, the wood makes the very finest charcoal, it can be pulped for paper and the young seeds taste delicious in a botok.

“He could go on for hours, and does. Rabbit urine is excellent for orchids. He explains how to collect it and in passing recommends rabbit satay. Lambs’ tails are best docked with rubber constriction rings. It’s amazing what you can do with chicken waste. Manure from just four cattle and a $320 biomass fermenter can provide two hours’ supply of methane gas for cooking. Yes, $320 is a lot, so that’s where co-ops come in, “but the initiative must come from the villagers themselves because cooperation decreed from above just won’t work. The farmers have to be convinced.” Suharto seems sorry to stop but affairs of state are pressing. The white Mercedes is waiting, the escort convoy ready, guards alert. The president poses briefly with the young Indonesians for treasured souvenir snapshots. The Minister of State for Youth drops to kiss his hand. Whatever President Suharto’s next appointment may be, it’s hard to imagine he’ll enjoy it as much as this morning’s discourse.

Four mornings later in an exclusive interview, the first of its kind he has given for a very long time, President Suharto again takes up the theme of rural development. “There’s not a single village in all Indonesia - and there are about 65,000 of them - that is being neglected. Each is provided with about 1.35m. rupiah [$1,200] in [extra] subsidies. But the [money] serves only to stimulate potential. The village people themselves apply it to work projects they undertake.” Under Suharto, Indonesia has evolved an administrative mechanism called the “Presidential Instruction,” or INPRES, a kind of bureaucratic shortcut, he explains, “to channel funds directly to [local governments] for projects like school buildings and health centres. It ensures equitable distribution of development in rural areas, the main focus of our national goals.

”Whatever happens to oil revenues, Suharto insists, these grassroots funds will not be curtailed. “The government may be forced to redefine its priorities,” he says, citing construction of office buildings and national schemes as among the first to be put on hold, “but rural development will not be reduced. We will continue to give priority to irrigation, electricity and roads.”Suharto reached the peaks of military and executive power without losing touch with his peasant roots.

Born in 1921 to a tenant farmer who tilled less than a hectare of land in the kampong of Kemusu-Argomulyo near Jogjakarta, the future president, according to his authorised biography, was passed no less than six times during childhood and adolescence among relatives and family friends after his parents separated when he was two. The world of his boyhood and adolescence was confined to villages and towns within a day’s easy-paced journey from the royal cities of Jogja and Solo, heartland of Javanese classical culture and stronghold of mysticism. It must be assumed that a barefoot peasant boy never imagined that the unthinkably unapproachable sultan beyond the walls of Jogja’s kraton would one day be his vice president.

For the times, Suharto’s education - elementary and middle schools - was as much as a person of his status might expect. At 18, he enlisted as a private in Queen Wilhelmina’s Royal Dutch Indies Army. He had made sergeant by the time the Japanese arrived. He volunteered for the Japan-sponsored Indonesian army and was commissioned lieutenant. A 24-year-old captain by war’s end, he heeded the call of nationalist leaders Sukarno, Mohamed Hatta, the Jogja sultan and others, declared himself for the republic and became one of the new nation’s first professional soldiers. As a lieutenant-colonel, often barefoot, he led Indonesian guerilla troops against the Dutch in their 1945-49 bid to re-establish authority.

On March 1, 1949, he entered and briefly occupied Jogjakarta.Military postings took him about the archipelago over the next 15 years, and at the time of the Oct. 1, 1965, coup he was a major-general in charge of the Army Strategic Command. To Suharto fell the task of putting down the rebel faction. He told his admiring German biographer O. G. Roeder that “my officers agreed that I should assume the leadership since I was the only field commander who was in a position to act.” President Sukarno formalised the authority the next day and put him effectively in control some five months later. For two years Suharto’s star steadily rose as Sukarno’s waned. In March 1967 Suharto became acting president. He became president the following March.

Indonesia’s only two presidents could scarcely have been less alike. The charismatic Sukarno, fiery orator, nationalist demagogue with penchant for high living and grand attire, trod the world stage, leaving an indelible, if somewhat histrionic, imprint. Suharto’s style is low key, his profile smoothed by an aura of smiling enigma. He did not absorb European values from a Western education. He detests unseemliness in conduct or bearing. He is politely taciturn. Subordinates say they have to interpret his wishes from smiles or frowns or other subtle indications. As he made clear in expressing his thoughts to me, he dwells upon the mysteries and meanings of creation. Yet he is a practical soldier, very, very much in charge.

Indonesians know these things. They’ve heard him expound on his pet theories on radio and television over and over. (If they grow weary of it, they know better than to say so.) They know their president is obsessively committed to [the philosophy of national identity] Pancasila. But outsiders, unfamiliar with his character or philosophies, are often perplexed. President Suharto, however self-serving and platitudinous, helps close gaps in understanding by recording his views on life and nation:

ON THE NATURE OF GOD:
Even before the coming of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, our ancestors believed in one almighty God who created the universe. They were already religious. But what is God? You cannot see God. You cannot touch God. What we believe in is the supreme goodness, the entirely perfect. Every religion teaches what is good and what is not and that the good should be done and the not-good forbidden. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam have such teachings. The ancestors of the Indonesian nation were aware of this gift of God. Therefore individuals may freely embrace religious beliefs.

ON THE CHARACTER OF MAN:
Humans, created by God Almighty, are blessed with two natural, inseparable attributes: as individual and social beings. Introspection makes us realise how daily activities are influenced by the environment. Even walking - what man walks on is the product of the work of other people. For most of his life man depends on his nature as a social being. Individuals, influenced by conflict, should control their dual natures. Goodness is accompanied by evil. Patience is good but quickness to anger is not. We must aspire to cultivate our good qualities. We should be willing to sacrifice individual interests for social interests in family and nation.

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF PANCASILA:
Our ancestors discovered these pearls, not based on world ideologies. Pancasila consists of five principles: belief in God Almighty, just and civilised humanitarianism, the unity of Indonesia, democracy based on consultation and consensus, and social justice. The Pancasila society aims to create justice and prosperity, to improve living standards, to enlighten and educate, to protect citizens and territorial integrity and to participate in the establishment of an orderly world based on independence, everlasting peace and social justice’. “Belief in God Almighty” was substituted for the words in the Jakarta Charter of 1945, “Belief in God Almighty with the obligation for each Muslim to carry out the teachings of Islam.” The last words could have affected Indonesian unity.

ON THE ERROR OF SUKARNO:
Some people claim President Sukarno was the author of Pancasila, but he himself said that all he did was rediscover the pearls of wisdom inherited from our ancestors. As a patriot, a freedom fighter, he was aware he had only to dig. But there was no effort to find out how our ancestors thought of the pearls reassembled by Bung Karno into Pancasila. He was well aware of the shortcomings of liberalism, socialism and communism and how Pancasila could fill the gaps. But he said Pancasila was a sort of synthesis, a [makes a triangle with his hands] of these ideologies. President Sukarno used Pancasila as a forum to unify ideologies under NASAKOM - nationalism, religion and communist ideology. But communist elements used it to consolidate strength to stage a coup and establish a communist state. Since the late president insisted on NASAKOM, he did not want to disband the Communist Party of Indonesia. This brought confrontation because the people rejected the communists and consequently brought the establishment of the New Order with the aim of returning to the genuine application of Pancasila as the philosophy of the state and returning to the principles of the 1945 constitution.

ON THE GENERATION OF SUCCESSORS:
We are trying to pass on the framework of the nation, the mechanism of national leadership with sovereignty vested in the people and exercised through their chosen representatives in the Consultative Assembly, which, as the highest organ of state, formulates the guidelines of state policy and every five years elects a citizen, to become the head of state, who mandatorally executes those guidelines and who is controlled by Parliament. The government has laid the foundations. Future generations need only continue. It has not been easy. Politicians were still much influenced by struggle and outside ideologies. It took 20 years after 1965 but eventually Pancasila was adopted, through musyawarah & mufakat, [consultation & consensus] as the sole basic philosophy by all socio-political forces in the country and by mass organisations. This will be guaranteed in part by the dual function of the armed forces, social and political as well as military. So it is anticipated that there will be no occasion when the armed forces will use force to stage a coup against the legal government.

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