Soeharto (Part V)

Resignation The Asian Financial Crisis had dire consequences for the Indonesian economy and society, and Suharto's regime. The Indonesian currency collapsed in value, foreign investment dried up, and mass layoffs of urban workers and price rises created tension across the country. Suharto was re-elected for another five-year term in March 1998, stacking parliament and cabinet with his own family and business associates in the process. Increasingly, prominent political figures spoke out against Suharto's presidency, and university...

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Soeharto (Part IV)

The "New Order" (1967–1998) At first, many saw Suharto as a comparatively obscure officer who had been fortuitously thrust to prominence by the events of late 1965 and assumed he would not remain in power long. However, by the early 1970s, he had consolidated his position by both isolating his rivals within the army and ruling elite and rewarding those loyal to him with patronage building the presidency into the most powerful institution in Indonesia. By the 1980s, Suharto dominated the New Order and his military contemporaries...

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Soeharto (Part III)

Background From the late 1950s, political conflict grew and the economy deteriorated. By the mid-1960s, annual inflation ran between 500–1,000%, export revenues were shrinking, infrastructure crumbling, and severe poverty and hunger were widespread. President Sukarno led his country in a military confrontation with Malaysia while stepping up revolutionary and anti-western rhetoric.Sukarno's position came to depend on balancing the increasingly hostile forces of the army and Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). By 1965 at the height...

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Soeharto (Part II)

Military Career World War II and Japanese occupation After finishing middle school at the age of 18, Suharto took a clerical job at a bank in Wurjantaro but was forced to resign after a bicycle mishap tore his only working clothes.Following a spell of unemployment, he joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) in 1940, and studied in a Dutch-run military school in Gombong near Yogyakarta. With the Netherlands under German occupation and the Japanese pressing for access to Indonesian oil supplies, the Dutch had opened...

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Soeharto (Part I)

Suharto, (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was the second President of Indonesia, having held the office for 31 years from 1967 following Sukarno's removal until his resignation in 1998. Suharto was born in a small village, Kemusuk, in the Godean area near Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. He grew up in humble circumstances. His Javanese Muslim parents divorced not long after his birth, and he was passed between foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Suharto served in Japanese-organised...

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Soekarno (Part III)

Ir. Soekarno Art Work by : Brani Photo Gallery Foreign policy As Sukarno's domestic grip on power was secured, he began to pay more attention to the world stage, where Sukarno embarked on a series of aggressive and assertive policies based on anti-imperialism to increase Indonesia's prestige internationally. These anti-imperialist and anti-Western policies, often bordering on brinkmanship, were also designed to provide a common cause to unite the diverse and fractious Indonesian people. In this, he was aided by his Foreign...

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Soekarno (Part II)

Ir. Soekarno Art Work by : Brani Photo Gallery Figurehead president At this time, as part of compromise with the Dutch, Indonesia adopted a new federal constitution that made the country a federal state called the Republik Indonesia Serikat (Republic of United States of Indonesia), consisting of the Republic of Indonesia whose borders were determined by the "Van Mook Line", along with 6 states and 9 autonomous territories created by the Dutch. During the first half of 1950, these states gradually dissolved itself as the Dutch...

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