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 students organised nation-wide demonstrations.

The shooting of four student demonstrators in Jakarta in May 1998 triggered rioting across the city that destroyed thousands of buildings and killed over 1,000 people. Following public outrage at the events, a student occupation of the parliament building, street protests across the country, and the desertion of key political allies, on 21 May 1998 Suharto announced his resignation from the presidency. His recently appointed Vice President Habibie assumed the presidency in accordance with the constitution.

Post-presidency

Suharto
reads his address of resignation
at Merdeka Palace on 21 May 1998.
Suharto's successor, B. J. Habibie, is to his right.

After his resignation, Suharto retired to a family compound in Central Jakarta, making few public appearances. Efforts to prosecute Suharto mostly centred around alleged mismanagement of funds, and their force has been blunted due to health concerns as well as lack of support within Indonesia for attempts to prosecute him. Suharto was never prosecuted.


Investigations of wealth
In May 1999, Time Asia estimated Suharto's family fortune at US$15 billion in cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewelry and fine art. Of this, US$9 billion is reported to have been deposited in an Austrian bank. The family is said to control about 36,000 km² of real estate in Indonesia, including 100,000 m² of prime office space in Jakarta and nearly 40% of the land in East Timor. Suharto was placed highest on Transparency International's list of corrupt leaders with an alleged misappropriation of between US $15–35 billion during his 32-year presidency.
On 29 May 2000, Suharto was placed under house arrest when Indonesian authorities began to investigate the corruption during his regime. In July 2000, it was announced that he was to be accused of embezzling US$571 million of government donations to one of a number of foundations under his control and then using the money to finance family investments. But in September court-appointed doctors announced that he could not stand trial because of his declining health. State prosecutors tried again in 2002 but then doctors cited an unspecified brain disease. On 26 March 2008, a civil court judge acquitted Suharto of corruption but ordered his charitable foundation, Supersemar, to pay US$110 m (£55 m).


Related legal cases
In 2002, Suharto's son Hutomo Mandala Putra, more widely known as Tommy, was sentenced to 15 years jail. He had been convicted of ordering the killing of a judge who had sentenced him to 18 months jail for corruption and illegal weapons possession. In 2006, he was freed on "conditional release." following reductions in his sentence.
In 2003, Suharto's half-brother Probosutedjo was tried and convicted for corruption and the loss of $10 million from the Indonesian state. He was sentenced to four years in jail. He later won a reduction of his sentence to two years, initiating a probe by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission into the alleged scandal of the "judicial mafia" which uncovered offers of $600,000 to various judges. Probosutedjo confessed to the scheme in October 2005, leading to the arrest of his lawyers. His full four-year term was reinstated. After a brief standoff at a hospital, in which he was reportedly protected by a group of police officers, he was arrested on 30 November 2005.
On 9 July 2007, Indonesian prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit against former President Suharto, to recover state funds ($440 m or £219 m, which allegedly disappeared from a scholarship fund, and a further $1.1 billion in damages).
On 4 September 2007, mediation at the Attorney General's Office (AGO) between prosecutors and lawyers for Suharto over the Supersemar foundation civil lawsuit succeeded and thus the trial will have to commence.
On 10 September 2007, Indonesia's Supreme Court awarded Suharto damages against Time Asia magazine, ordering it to pay him one trillion rupiah ($128.59 million). The High Court reversed the judgment of an appellate court and Central Jakarta district court (made in 2000 and 2001). Suharto had sued the U.S.-based Time magazine seeking more than $US 27 billion in damages for libel over a 1999 article which reported that he transferred stolen money abroad.


Health crises
After resigning from the presidency, Suharto was hospitalised repeatedly for stroke, heart, and intestinal problems. His declining health negatively affected attempts to prosecute him on charges of corruption and human rights violations as his lawyers successfully claimed that his condition rendered him unfit for trial. Moreover, there was little support within Indonesia for any attempts to prosecute him. In 2006, Attorney General Abdurrahman announced that a team of twenty doctors would be asked to evaluate Suharto's health and fitness for trial. One physician, Brigadier General Dr Marjo Subiandono, stated his doubts about by noting that "[Suharto] has two permanent cerebral defects." In a later Financial Times report, Attorney General Abdurrahman discussed the re-examination, and called it part of a "last opportunity" to prosecute Suharto criminally. Attorney General Abdurrahman left open the possibility of filing suit against the Suharto estate."

Death
On 4 January 2008, Suharto was taken to the Pertamina hospital, Jakarta with complications arising from a weak heart, swelling of limbs and stomach, and partial renal failure. His health fluctuated for several weeks but progressively worsened with anaemia and low blood pressure due to heart and kidney complications, internal bleeding, fluid on his lungs, and blood in his feces and urine which caused a haemoglobin drop. On 23 January, Suharto's health worsened further, as a sepsis infection spread through his body.[89] His family consented to the removal of life support machines, and he died on 27 January at 1:10 pm.
Suharto's body was taken from Jakarta to the Giri Bangun mausoleum complex near the Central Java city of Solo. He was buried alongside his late wife in a state military funeral with full honours, with the Kopassus elite forces and KOSTRAD commandos as the honour guard and pallbearers and Commander of Group II Kopassus Surakarta Lt. Colonel Asep Subarkah. In attendance were the incumbent president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as "Ceremony Inspector", and vice-president, government ministers, and armed forces chiefs of staff. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to see the convoy. Condolences were offered by many regional heads of state, although certain regional leaders such as Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, boycotted the funeral, whereas Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared a week of official mourning.

The End

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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 had retired or were otherwise no longer a threat to his position.

Suharto
is appointed President of Indonesia at a ceremony,
March 1968.

Following the communal and political conflicts, economic collapse and social breakdown of the late-1950s and mid-1960s, Suharto's "New Order" (so-termed to distinguish it from Sukarno's "old order",began with much popular support from groups keen to be free of the troubles of the past. The new generation of young leaders and intellectual life was loosely termed the angkatan 66 ("generation of 66"), however, within a few years the New Order elite, centred around a military faction, had alienated many of its original supporters. While rightists admired the New Order for eradicating the PKI and for its pro-Western policies, leftists despised it for doing the same. The government received admiration for stabilising the economy, but received condemnation for corruption and its human rights record. In place of Sukarno's revolutionary rhetoric, Suharto showed a pragmatic use of power, and in contrast to the liberal parliamentary democracy of the 1950s, Suharto headed an authoritarian, military-dominated government.The "New Order" featured a weak civil society, the bureaucratisation and corporatisation of political and societal organisations, and selective but effective repression of opponents.

To maintain domestic order, Suharto greatly expanded the funding and powers of the Indonesian state apparatus. He established two intelligence agencies—the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order (Kopkamtib) and the State Intelligence Coordination Agency (BAKIN)—to deal with threats to the regime. The Bureau of Logistics (BULOG) was established to distribute rice and other staple commodities granted by USAID. These new government bodies were put under the military regional command structure, that under Suharto was given a "dual function" as both a defence force and as civilian administrators. The New Order rolled Indonesian political parties into two — nationalists and Christian parties became the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), and Muslim parties into the People's Development Party (PPP). The New Order built an army-sponsored co-operative movement, Golkar, a coalition of society's "functional groups", into an official party of secular development. Golkar, PDI, and PPP were the only parties allowed to contend elections with the latter two prevented from forming an effective opposition. 100 seats in the electoral college for electing the President were set aside for military representatives. Suharto was elected unopposed as president in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998.
As part of 1967s 'Basic Policy for the Solution of the Chinese Problem' and other measures, all but one Chinese-language papers were closed, all Chinese religious expressions had to be confined to their homes, Chinese-language schools were phased out, Chinese script in public places was banned, and Chinese were encouraged to take on Indonesian-sounding names. Much of this legislation was revoked following Suharto's fall from power in 1998.

Suharto on a visit to West Germany in 1970.

Economy
From 1965 to 68, hyper-inflation was brought under control. A group of American-educated economists, dubbed the 'Berkeley Mafia', were brought into restructure economic policy. Measures implemented to encourage foreign investment in Indonesia included the privatisation of natural resources, labour laws favourable to multinational corporations, and soliciting funds for development from institutions including the World Bank, western banks, and friendly governments. In a shift from policy under Sukarno, the New Order allowed USAID and other donor agencies to resume operations within the country.[citation needed] He opened Indonesia's economy by divesting state owned companies, and western nations were encouraged to invest in mining and construction activities.[citation needed] Within a few years, the Indonesian economy had been revived from its near collapsed state of the mid-1960s. It recorded strong annual economic growth for the three decades of Suharto's presidency although some of the gains were lost in the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis. Indonesia achieved self-sufficiency in rice production by the mid-1980s, basic education was provided to almost all citizens, and a successful family planning program was implemented. Subsidies on basics such as food and fuel to maintain grass-roots support were provided but were costly to the government budget.

Suharto's former government ministers flatly stated the alleged lowering of poverty rates was false. The Suharto regime's definition of poverty was also inflated: it was a monetary sum, a rupiah base sufficient to enable the poor to get the internationally accepted norm of 2,100 calories a day. The cash amount had been less than the globally accepted poverty line of $1 a day. Until the 1998 crisis, it was only about half that in Indonesia's cities, and less in the countryside.
Influence and business opportunity became increasingly concentrated within Suharto's family, relatives, favoured generals and a number of ethnic Chinese businessmen that he had known since his time in Semarang in particular Liem Siu Liong and Bob Hasan. Much of the funds flowed to foundations (yayasan) controlled by the Suharto family. By the late 1980s, the extent of the first family's business activities concerned even long-time military associates, such as General Benny Murdani. By the pre-financial crisis peak of the mid-1990s, the family's annual revenue was estimated in the billions of US dollars. Much of it was recycled back into pay-offs, patronage, military subsidies, and campaign funding.


Foreign policy, Irian Jaya, East Timor and Aceh
Upon assuming power, Suharto dispatched his foreign minister Adam Malik to mend strained relations with the United States, the United Nations, and end the Sukarno-instigated Konfrontasi with Malaysia. Previously increasingly close relations with China were cut (diplomatic ties were restored in 1990). Suharto played an important role in the establishment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the early 1990s. Officially, the "New Order" followed a foreign policy of neutrality.

Suharto attends 1970
meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement
 inLusaka.

In 1969, Suharto's government reached an agreement with the United States and United Nations, to hold a referendum on self-determination for western New Guinea. The 1969 "Act of Free Choice" was open to 1022 "chiefs" and the unanimous decision for integration with Indonesia lead to doubts of its validity. In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and the following year declared East Timor the 27th province of Indonesia, a status never recognised by the United Nations. Following Suharto's 1998 resignation from the Presidency, the Indonesian government ceded control of East Timor in 1999 following a referendum vote for independence. An estimated minimum of 90,800 and maximum of 213,600 conflict-related deaths occurred in East Timor during the period 1974–1999 (i.e., 13% to 30.5% of the population); namely, 17,600–19,600 killings and 73,200 to 194,000 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness, although Indonesian forces were responsible for only about 70% of the violent killings.
In 1976 Suharto authorised troops to put down the rebellion of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, who demanded independence for Aceh from Indonesia, forcing several of its leaders into exile in Sweden.[73] Prolonged fighting between GAM and the Indonesian military and police led Suharto to declare martial law in the province, by naming Aceh a "military operational area" in 1990.

Suharto with U.S. Secretary of Defense
William Cohen, 14 January 1998.

Politics and dissent
In 1970, corruption prompted student protests and an investigation by a government commission. Suharto responded by banning student protests, forcing the activists underground. Only token prosecution of the cases recommended by the commission was pursued. On 5 May 1980 a group of prominent military men, politicians, academics and students calling themselves the "Petition of Fifty" questioned Suharto's use of the national ideology Pancasila. The Indonesian media suppressed the news and the government placed restrictions on the signatories. After the group's 1984 accusation that Suharto was creating a one-party state, some of its leaders were jailed.[citation needed] In the same decade, it is believed by many scholars that the Indonesian military split between a nationalist "red and white faction" and an Islamist "green faction." As the 1980s closed, Suharto is said to have been forced to shift his alliances from the former to the latter, leading to the rise of Jusuf Habibie in the 1990s.
The New Order's economic achievements were a major foundation of support for Suharto across decades. Economic growth, however, was causing great social change which was in contrast to the rigid political system built around the President. Social dislocation in rural areas and the formation of a new working class around large industrial areas led to a sense of social inequalities jealousies from the late 1980s. At the same time, the fast growing and prospering middle class grew increasingly uneasy with corruption and looked for greater political participation. Key figures and factions within the ruling elite began to jockey ready for Presidential succession as Suharto entered his late 60s.
Following the end of the Cold War, Western concern over communism waned, and Suharto's human rights record came under greater international scrutiny. The 1991 killing of over 200 East Timorese civilians in Dili, East Timor, resulted in the Congress of the United States passing limitations on IMET assistance to the Indonesian military. In 1993, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission helped pass a resolution expressing deep concern over Indonesian human rights violations in East Timor.
By 1996, Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno, and chair of the Indonesian Democratic Party was increasingly critical of Suharto's "New Order". In response, Suharto backed a co-opted faction led by Deputy Speaker of Parliament Suryadi, which removed Megawati from the chair. A government crackdown on demonstrating Megawati supporters result in a number of deaths, rioting and the arrest of two-hundred. Those arrested were tried under the anti-Subversion and hate-spreading laws. It marked the beginning of a renewed crackdown by the New Order government against supporters of democracy, now called the "Reformasi" or Reformation.

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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 of the Cold War, the PKI penetrated all levels of government. With the support of Sukarno, the party gained increasing influence at the expense of the army, thus ensuring the army's enmity. By late 1965, the army was divided between a left-wing faction allied with the PKI, and a right-wing faction that was being courted by the United States.

Abortive coup and anti-communist purge

As Major General,
Suharto (at right, foreground)
attends funeral for assassinated generals
5 October 1965.

On the night of 30 September 1965 six senior army generals were kidnapped and executed in Jakarta by a battalion of soldiers from the Presidential Guard.[38] Backed by elements of the armed forces, the insurgents occupied Merdeka Square including the areas in front of the Presidential Palace, the national radio station, and telecommunications centre. At 7:10 am Lt. Col. Untung Syamsuri announced on radio that the "30 September Movement" had forestalled a coup by "power-mad generals", and that it was "an internal army affair". Apart from Armed Forces Chief of Staff, General Abdul Haris Nasution—who was targeted but escaped assassination by climbing over his garden wall when soldiers arrived to arrest him—Suharto was the most senior general not removed by the 30 September group. Suharto had been in hospital that evening with his three-year old son Tommy who had a scalding injury. It was here that he spoke to Colonel Abdul Latief, the only key person in the ensuing events with whom he spoke that evening.
Upon being told of the shootings and disappearances, Suharto went to Kostrad headquarters just before dawn from where he could see soldiers occupying Merdeka Square. He led Kostrad in seizing control of the centre of Jakarta, capturing key strategic sites. Suharto announced over the radio at 9:00 pm that six generals had been kidnapped by "counter-revolutionaries". He said he was in control of the army, and that he would crush the 30 September Movement and safeguard Sukarno. Suharto issued an ultimatum to Halim Air Force Base, where the G30S had based themselves and where Sukarno (the reasons for his presence are unclear and were subject of claim and counter-claim), General Omar Dhani and Aidit had gathered. The coup leaders fled Jakarta while G30S-sympathetic battalions in Central Java quickly came under Suharto control.
The poorly organised and coordinated coup thus failed, and by 2 October, Suharto's faction was firmly in control of the army. Sukarno's obedience to Suharto's 1 October ultimatum to leave Halim changed all power relationships. Sukarno's fragile balance of power between the military, political Islam, communists, and nationalists that underlay his "Guided Democracy" was collapsing. Complicated and partisan theories continue to this day over the identity of the attempted coup's organisers and their aims. The army's (and subsequently the "New Order's") official version was that the PKI was solely responsible. Other theories include Suharto being behind the events; that the army and Suharto was merely taking advantage of a poorly executed coup; and that Sukarno was behind the events (see 30 September Movement).
A military propaganda campaign convinced both Indonesian and international audiences that it was a Communist coup, and that the murders were cowardly atrocities against Indonesian heroes. The army led a campaign to purge Indonesian society, government and armed forces of the communist party and leftist organisations. The purge quickly spread from Jakarta to much of the rest of the country. In some areas the army organised civilian and religious groups and local militias, in other areas communal vigilante action preceded the army. The most widely accepted estimates are that at least half a million were killed. As many as 1.5 million were imprisoned at one stage or another. As a result of the purge, one of Sukarno's three pillars of support, the Indonesian Communist Party, was effectively eliminated by the other two, the military and political Islam.


Power struggle
On 2 October, Suharto accepted Sukarno's order to take control of the army on Suharto's condition that he personally have authority to restore order and security. The 1 November formation of Kopkamtib (Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban, or Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order), formalised this authority.By January 1966 the PKI, President Sukarno's strongest pillar of support, had been effectively eliminated, the army now saw its opportunity to occupy the apex of Indonesian power.Sukarno was still the Supreme Commander by virtue of the constitution, thus Suharto was careful not to be seen to be seizing power in his own coup. For eighteen months following the quashing of the 30 September Movement, there was a complicated process of political manoeuvers against Sukarno, including student agitation, stacking of parliament, media propaganda and military threats.
On 1 February 1966, Sukarno promoted Suharto to the rank of Lieutenant General. The same month, General Nasution had been forced out of his position of Defence Minister, and the power contest had been reduced to Suharto and Sukarno. The Supersemar decree of 11 March 1966 transferred much of Sukarno's power over the parliament and army to Suharto, ostensibly allowing Suharto to do whatever was needed to restore order. On 12 March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining power by Indonesia's provisional Parliament, and Suharto was named Acting President. Sukarno was placed under house arrest; little more was heard from him, and he died in June 1970. On 27 March 1968, the Provisional Peoples Representative Assembly formally appointed Suharto for the first of his five-year terms as President.

The "New Order" (1967–1998)

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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 up the KNIL to large intakes of previously excluded Javanese. After graduation, Suharto was assigned to Battalion XIII at Rampal. His service there was unremarkable, although he contracted malaria which required hospitalisation while on guard duty, and then gained promotion to sergeant.

The March 1942 invasion of Imperial Japanese forces was initially welcomed by many Indonesians as a key step towards independence and Suharto was one of thousands of Indonesians who volunteered for Japanese organised security forces. He first joined the Japanese sponsored police force at the rank of keibuho (assistant inspector), where he claimed to have gained his first experience in the intelligence work so central to his presidency ("Criminal matters became a secondary problem," Suharto remarked, "what was most important were matters of a political kind").

Suharto shifted from police work toward the Japanese-sponsored militia, the Peta (Defenders of the Fatherland) in which Indonesians served as officers. In his training to serve at the rank of shodancho (platoon commander) he encountered a localized version of the Japanese bushido, or "way of the warrior", used to indoctrinate troops. This training encouraged an anti-Dutch and pro-nationalist thought, although toward the aims of the Imperial Japanese militarists. The encounter with a nationalistic and militarist ideology is believed to have profoundly influenced Suharto's own way of thinking. The Japanese turned ex-NCOs, including Suharto, into officers and gave them further military education, including lessons in the use of the samurai sword. Suharto's biographer, O.G. Roeder, records in The Smiling General (1969) that Suharto was "well known for his tough, but not brutal, methods".

Indonesian National Revolution
Two days after the Japanese surrender in the Pacific, independence leaders Sukarno and Hatta declared Indonesian independence, and were appointed President and Vice-President respectively of the new Republic. Suharto disbanded his regiment in accordance with orders from the Japanese command and returned to Yogyakarta. As republican groups rose to assert Indonesian independence, Suharto joined a new unit of the newly formed Indonesian army. On the basis of his PETA experience, he was appointed deputy commander, and subsequently a battalion commander when the republican forces were formally organised in October 1945. Suharto was involved in fighting against Allied troops around Magelang and Semarang, and was subsequently appointed head of a brigade as lieutenant-colonel, having earned respect as a field commander. In the early years of the War, he organised local armed forces into Battalion X of Regiment I; Suharto was promoted to the rank of Major and became Battalion X's leader.
The arrival of the Allies, under a mandate to return the situation to the status quo ante bellum, quickly led to clashes between Indonesian republicans and Allied forces, namely returning Dutch and assisting British forces. Suharto led his Division X troops to halt an advance by the Dutch T ("Tiger") Brigade on 17 May 1946. It earned him the respect of his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Sunarto Kusumodirjo, who invited him to draft the working guidelines for the Battle Leadership Headquarters (MPP), a body created to organise and unify the command structure of the Indonesian Nationalist forces. The military forces of the still infant Republic of Indonesia were constantly restructuring. By August 1946, Suharto was head of the 22nd Regiment of Division III (the "Diponegoro Division") stationed in Yogyakarta. In late 1946, the Diponegoro Division assumed responsibility for defence of the west and southwest of Yogyakarta from Dutch forces. Conditions at the time are reported in Dutch sources as miserable; Suharto himself is reported as assisting smuggling syndicates in the transport of opium through the territory he controlled, to make income.

Lieutenant Colonel Suharto in 1947.

In December 1948, the Dutch launched "Operation Crow", which decimated much of the Indonesian fighting forces, and resulted in the capture of Sukarno and Hatta.For his part, Suharto took severe casualties in a humiliating defeat for Republican forces as the Dutch invaded the area of Yogyakarta. In dawn raids on 1 March 1949, Suharto's forces and local militia re-captured the city, holding it until noon. Suharto's later accounts had him as the lone plotter, although other sources say Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of Yogyakarta, and the Panglima of the Third Division ordered the attack. However, General Nasution said that Suharto took great care in preparing the "General Offensive" (Indonesian Serangan Umum). Civilians sympathetic to the Republican cause within the city had been galvanised by the show of force which proved that the Dutch had failed to win the guerrilla war. Internationally, the United Nations Security Council pressured the Dutch to cease the military offensive and to re-commence negotiations. Suharto reportedly took an active interest in the peace agreements, but as for many Republican military men, they were much to his dissatisfaction.

Suharto with his wife and six children in 1967.

During the Revolution, Suharto married Siti Hartinah (known as Madam Tien), the daughter of a minor noble in the Mangkunegaran royal house of Solo. The arranged marriage was enduring and supportive, lasting until Tien's death in 1996. The couple had six children: Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (Tutut, born 1949), Sigit Harjojudanto (born 1951), Bambang Trihatmodjo (born 1953), Siti Hediati (Titiek, born 1959), Hutomo Mandala Putra (Tommy, born 1962), and Siti Hutami Endang Adiningish (Mamiek, born 1964). Within the Javanese upper class, it was considered acceptable if the wife pursued genteel commerce to supplement the family budget, allowing her husband to keep his dignity in his official role. The commercial dealings of Tien, her children and grandchildren became extensive and ultimately undermined Suharto's presidency.


Post-Independence military career
In the years following Indonesian independence, Suharto served in the Indonesian National Army, primarily in Java. In 1950, Colonel Suharto led the Garuda Brigade in suppressing a rebellion of largely Ambonese colonial-trained supporters of the Dutch-established State of East Indonesia and its federal entity the United States of Indonesia. During his year in Makassar, Suharto became acquainted with his neighbours the Habibie family, whose eldest son BJ Habibie would later become Suharto's vice-president and went on to succeed him as President. In 1951, Suharto led his troops in a blocking campaign against the Islamic-inspired rebellion of Battalion 426 in Central Java before it was broken by the 'Banteng (Wild Buffalo) Raiders' led by Ahmad Yani.
Between 1954 and 1959, he served in the important position of commander of Diponegoro Division, responsible for Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces. His relationship with prominent businessmen Liem Sioe Liong and Bob Hasan, which extend throughout his presidency, began in Central Java where he was involved in series of "profit generating" enterprises conducted primarily to keep the poorly funded military unit functioning. Army anti-corruption investigations implicated Suharto in a 1959 smuggling scandal. Relieved of his position, he was transferred to the army's Staff and Command School (Seskoad) in the city of Bandung. While in Bandung, he was promoted to brigadier-general, and in late 1960, promoted to chief of army intelligence. In 1961, he was given an additional command, as head of the army's new Strategic Reserve (later KOSTRAD), a ready-reaction air-mobile force.
In January 1962, Suharto was promoted to the rank of major General and appointed to lead Operation Mandala, a joint army-navy-air force command. This formed the military side of the campaign to win western New Guinea, from the Dutch who were preparing it for its own independence, separate from Indonesia. In 1965, Suharto was assigned operational command of Sukarno's Konfrontasi, against the newly formed Malaysia. Fearful that Konfrontasi would leave Java thinly covered by the army, and hand control to the 2-million strong Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), he authorised a Kostrad intelligence officer, Ali Murtopo, to open contacts with the British and Malaysians.

Overthrow of Sukarno (1965)

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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 Indonesian security forces. Indonesia's independence struggle saw him joining the newly formed Indonesian army. Suharto rose to the rank of Major General following Indonesian independence. An attempted coup on 30 September 1965 was countered by Suharto-led troops and was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party. The army subsequently led an anti-communist purge, and Suharto wrested power from Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. He was appointed acting president in 1967 and President the following year. Support for Suharto's presidency was strong throughout the 1970s and 1980s but eroded following a severe financial crisis that led to widespread unrest and his resignation in May 1998. Suharto died in 2008.

The legacy of Suharto's 31-year rule is debated both in Indonesia and abroad. Under his "New Order" administration, Suharto constructed a strong, centralised and military-dominated government. An ability to maintain stability over a sprawling and diverse Indonesia and an avowedly anti-Communist stance won him the economic and diplomatic support of the West during the Cold War. For most of his presidency, Indonesia experienced significant economic growth and industrialisation, dramatically improving health, education and living standards.Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor during Suharto's presidency resulted in at least 100,000 deaths. By the 1990s, the New Order's authoritarianism and widespread corruption were a source of discontent. In the years after his presidency, attempts to try him on charges of corruption and genocide failed because of his poor health and because of lack of support within Indonesia.

Early Life
Suharto was born on 8 June 1921 during the Dutch East Indies era, in a plaited bamboo walled house in the hamlet of Kemusuk, a part of the larger village of Godean. The village is 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of Yogyakarta, the cultural heartland of the Javanese. Born to ethnic Javanese parents of peasant class, he was the only child of his father's second marriage. His father, Kertosudiro had two children from his previous marriage, and was a village irrigation official. His mother Sukirah, a local woman, was distantly related to Sultan Hamengkubuwono V by his first concubine.

Official Portrait of Suharto
and First Lady Siti Hartinah.

Five weeks after Suharto's birth, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown and he was placed in the care of his paternal great-aunt, Kromodiryo. Kertosudiro and Sukirah divorced early in Suharto's life and both later remarried. At the age of three, Suharto was returned to his mother who had remarried a local farmer whom Suharto helped in the rice paddies. In 1929, Suharto's father took him to live with his sister who was married to an agricultural supervisor, Prawirowihardjo, in the town of Wurjantoro in a poor and low-yield farming area near Wonogiri. Over the following two years, he was taken back to his mother in Kemusuk by his stepfather and then back again to Wurjantoro by his father.
Prawirowiharjo took to raising the boy as his own, which provided Suharto a father-figure and a stable home in Wuryantoro, from where he received much of his primary education. Suharto boarded with a dukun ("guru") of Javanese mystical arts and faith healing. The experience deeply affected him and later, as president, Suharto surrounded himself with powerful symbolic language. During this time, the Wonogiri area was one of the worst affected in Java from the collapse in the Dutch East Indies' export revenue during the Great Depression. As unemployed workers returned from the towns to their villages, the subsistence economy grew and the landless struggled to buy food.
The absence of official documentation and certain aspects of Suharto's early life that are inconsistent with that of a Javanese peasant (Suharto received, for example, an education fairly early on), has led to several rumours of Suharto being the illegitimate child of a well-off benefactor, which included being the child of a Yogyakarta aristocrat or a well-off Chinese Indonesian merchant.[14] Suharto biographer Robert E. Elson believes that such rumours cannot be entirely ruled out, given that much of the information Suharto has given on his origins has been tinged with political meaning.
Like many Javanese, Suharto had only one name. In religious contexts in recent years has sometimes been called “Haji” or “el-Haj Mohammed Suharto” but these names were not part of his formal name or generally used. The spelling "Suharto" reflects modern Indonesian spelling although the general approach in Indonesia is to rely on the spelling preferred by the person concerned. At the time of his birth, the standard transcription was "Soeharto" and he preferred the original spelling. The international English-language press generally uses the spelling 'Suharto' while the Indonesian government and media use 'Soeharto'.
Suharto's upbringing contrasts with that of leading Indonesian nationalists such as Sukarno in that he is believed to have had little interest in anti-colonialism, or political concerns beyond his immediate surroundings. Unlike Sukarno and his circle, Suharto did not learn to speak Dutch or other European languages in his youth. He learned to speak Dutch after his induction into the Dutch military in 1940.

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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 Minister Subandrio.

Since his first visit to Beijing in 1956, Sukarno has began in the 1950s to increase his ties to the People's Republic of China and the communist bloc in general. He also began to accept increasing amounts of Soviet bloc military aid. By early 1960s, Soviet bloc provided more aid to Indonesia than to any other non-communist country, while Soviet military aid to Indonesia was only equalled by aid provided to Cuba. This large influx of communist aid prompted an increase in military aid from the Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy administrations, which worried about a leftward drift should Sukarno rely too much on Soviet bloc aid.

Sukarno was feted during his visit to United States in 1956, where he addressed a joint session of United States Congress. Soon after his first visit to America, Sukarno visited Soviet Union, where he received even more lavish welcome to Moscow. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev paid a return visit to Jakarta and Bali in 1960, where Khrushchev awarded Sukarno with the Lenin Peace Prize. To make amends for the CIA involvement in the PRRI-Permesta rebellion, President Kennedy invited Sukarno to Washington, and provided Indonesia with billions of dollars in civilian and military aid.

Despite his close relationships with both Western and Communist Blocs, Sukarno increasingly attempted to forge a new alliance called the "New Emerging Forces", as a counter to the old superpowers, whom he accused of spreading "Neo-Colonialism and Imperialism" (NEKOLIM). In 1961, this first president of Indonesia also found another political alliance, an organization, called the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM, in Indonesia known as Gerakan Non-Blok, GNB) with Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito, and Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, in an action called The Initiative of Five (Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nasser, Tito, and Nehru). This action was a movement to not give any favour to the two superpower blocs, who were involved in the Cold War. Sukarno is still fondly remembered for his role in promoting the influence of newly-independent countries; among others, his name is used as streetnames in Cairo, Egypt and Rabat, Morocco, and as a major square in Peshawar, Pakistan. In 1956, the University of Belgrade awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Sukarno at Borobudur with Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru
and his daughter Indira Gandhi during their visit to Indonesia

As the NAM countries were becoming split into differing factions, and as fewer countries were willing to support Sukarno's growing aggressive anti-Western foreign policies, he increasingly began to abandon his non-alignment rhetoric, in exchange for a new alliance with China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cambodia, an alliance he called the "Beijing-Pyongyang-Hanoi-Phnom Penh-Jakarta Axis". After withdrawing Indonesia from the "imperialist-dominated" United Nations on January 1965, Sukarno sought to establish a competitor organisation to the UN called Conference of New Emerging Forces (CONEFO) with support from China, who at that time was not yet a member of United Nations.
Sukarno began an aggressive foreign policy to secure Indonesian territorial claims. On August 1960, Sukarno broke-off diplomatic relations with the Netherlands over continuing failure to commence talks on the future of Netherlands New Guinea, as was agreed at the Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference of 1949. After the Dutch announced the formation of a Nieuw Guinea Raad on April 1961, with the intention of creating an independent Papuan state, Sukarno declared military confrontation in his Tri Komando Rakjat (TRIKORA) speech in Yogyakarta, on 19 December 1961. He organised military incursions into the half-island, whom he referred to as West Irian, which by end of 1962 has landed around 3,000 Indonesian soldiers throughout West Irian. On January 1962, a naval battle erupted when an Indonesian infiltration fleet of four torpedo boats were intercepted by Dutch ships and planes off the coast of Vlakke Hoek. In this battle, one Indonesian boat was sunk, killing the Naval Deputy Chief-of-Staff Commodore Jos Sudarso. On February 1962, the Kennedy administration, worried of a continuing Indonesian shift towards communism should the Dutch held-on to West Papua, sent Attorney-General Robert Kennedy to Netherlands, to underline that United States will not support Netherlands in case of conflict with Indonesia. With massive Soviet armaments and even manpower aid, Sukarno planned a large-scale air and seaborne invasion on the Dutch military headquarters of Biak scheduled for August 1962, called Operasi Djajawidjaja, to be led by Major-General Suharto. Before these highly risky plans can be realised, Indonesia and Netherlands signed the New York Agreement on August 1962. The two countries agreed to implement the Bunker Plan (formulated by American diplomat Ellsworth Bunker), whereby the Dutch agreed to hand-over West Papua to UNTEA on 1 October 1962. UNTEA handed the territory to Indonesian authority on May 1963.
After securing control over West Irian, Sukarno also opposed the British-supported establishment of Federation of Malaysia in 1963, claiming that it was a neo-colonial plot by the British to besiege Indonesia. In spite of his political overtures, which was partly justified when some leftist political elements in British Borneo territories Sarawak and Brunei opposed the Federation plan and aligned themselves with Sukarno, Malaysia was proclaimed in September 1963. This led to the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation (Konfrontasi), proclaimed by Sukarno in his Dwi Komando Rakjat (DWIKORA) speech in Jakarta on 3 May 1964. Sukarno's proclaimed objective was not to annex Sabah and Sarawak into Indonesia, but to establish a State of North Kalimantan under the control of North Kalimantan Communist Party. From 1964 until early 1966, limited numbers of Indonesian soldiers, "volunteers", and Malaysian communist guerillas were infiltrated into both north Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, where they engaged in jungle warfare with British and Commonwealth soldiers deployed to protect the nascent Malaysia. Indonesian agents also exploded several bombs in Singapore. Domestically, Sukarno whipped up anti-British sentiment and the British Embassy was burned down. In 1964, all British companies operating in the country, including Indonesian operations of the Chartered Bank and Unilever, were nationalized.
By 1964, Sukarno commenced an anti-American campaign due to his growing shift towards the communist bloc, and less friendly Lyndon Johnson administration. American interests and businesses in Indonesia were denounced and even attacked by PKI-led mobs. American movies were banned, American books and records of the Beatles were burned, and Indonesian band Koes Plus was jailed for playing American-style rock and roll music. As a result, US aid to Indonesia was halted, to which Sukarno made his famous remark, "Go to hell with your aid". Sukarno withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations membership on 7 January 1965 when, with US backing, Malaysia took a seat of UN Security Council. By this time, Sukarno's brinkmanship policies left him with few international allies. With the government already severely indebted to the tune of US$ 1 billion to the Soviet Union, Sukarno became increasingly dependent to Communist China for support. He spoke increasingly of a Peking-Jakarta axis, which would be the core of a new anti-imperialist world organization, the CONEFO.


Domestic tensions
Domestically, Sukarno continued to consolidate his control. He was made president for life by the MPRS in 1963. His ideological writings on Manipol-USDEK and NASAKOM became mandatory subjects in Indonesian schools and universities, while his speeches were to be memorized and discussed by all students. All newspapers, the only radio station (RRI), and the only television station (TVRI) were made into "tools of the revolution" and functioned to spread Sukarno's messages. Sukarno developed a personality cult, with the capital of newly-acquired West Irian renamed to Sukarnapura and the highest peak in the country was renamed from Carstensz Pyramid to Puntjak Sukarno (Sukarno Peak).
Despite these appearances of unchallenged control, Sukarno's guided democracy stood on fragile grounds due to the inherent conflict between its two underlying support pillars, the military and the communists. The military, nationalists, and the Islamic groups were shocked by the rapid growth of the communist party under Sukarno's protection. They feared immanent establishment of communist state in Indonesia. By 1965, the PKI had 3 million members, and were particularly strong in Central Java and Bali. PKI has become the strongest party in Indonesia.
The military and nationalists were growing wary of Sukarno's close alliance with communist China, which they thought compromised Indonesia's sovereignty. Elements of the military disagreed with Sukarno's policy of confrontation with Malaysia, which in their view only benefited communists, and sent several officers (including future Armed Forces Chief Leonardus Benjamin Moerdani) to spread secret peace-feelers to the Malaysian government. The Islamic clerics, who were mostly landowners, felt threatened by PKI's land confiscation actions (aksi sepihak) in the countryside and by the communist campaign against the "seven village devils", a term used for landlords or better-off farmers (similar to the anti-kulak campaign in Stalinist era).
As the mediator of the three groups under the NASAKOM system, Sukarno displayed greater sympathies to the communists. The PKI has been very careful to support all of Sukarno's policies. Meanwhile, Sukarno saw the PKI as the best-organised and ideologically-solid party in Indonesia, and a useful conduit to gain more military and financial aid from Communist Bloc countries. Sukarno also sympathised with the communists' revolutionary ideals, which is similar to his own.
To weaken the influence of the military, Sukarno rescinded martial law (which gave wide-ranging powers to the military) in 1963. On September 1962, he "promoted" the powerful General Nasution to the less-influential position of Armed Forces Chief, while the influential position of Army Chief was given to Sukarno's loyalist Ahmad Yani. Meanwhile, the position of Air Force Chief was given to Omar Dhani, who was an open communist sympathiser. On May 1964, Sukarno banned activities of Manifesto Kebudajaan (Manikebu), an association of artists and writers which included prominent Indonesian writers such as Hans Bague Jassin and Wiratmo Soekito, who were also dismissed from their jobs. Manikebu was considered a rival by the communist writer's association Lembaga Kebudajaan Rakjat (Lekra), led by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. On December 1964, Sukarno disbanded the Badan Pendukung Soekarnoisme (BPS), the "Association for Promoting Sukarnoism", an organisation that seek to oppose communism by invoking Sukarno's own Pancasila formulation. On January 1965, Sukarno, under pressure from PKI, banned the Murba Party. Murba was a Trotskyite party whose ideology was antagonistic to PKI's orthodox line of Marxism.
Tensions between the military and communists increased on April 1965, when PKI chairman Aidit called for the formation of a "fifth armed force" consisting of armed peasants and labor. Sukarno approved this idea and publicly called for the immediate formation of such a force on 17 May 1965. However, this idea was rejected by Army Chief Ahmad Yani and Defence Minister Nasution, as this was tantamount to allowing the PKI to establish its own armed forces. Soon after this rejection, on 29 May, the "Gilchrist Letter" appeared. The letter was supposedly written by the British ambassador Andrew Gilchrist to the Foreign Office in London, mentioning a joint American and British attempt on subversion in Indonesia with the help of "local army friends". This letter, produced by Subandrio, aroused Sukarno's fear of a military plot to overthrow him, a fear which he mentioned repeatedly during the next few months. The Czechoslovakian agent Vladislav Bittman who defected in 1968 claimed that his agency (StB) forged the letter on request from PKI via Soviet Union, to smear anti-communist generals. On his independence day speech of 17 August 1965, Sukarno declared his intention to commit Indonesia to an anti-imperialist alliance with China and other communist regimes, and warned the Army not to interfere. He also stated his support for the establishment of "fifth force" of armed peasants and labor.
While Sukarno devoted his energy for domestic and international politics, the economy of Indonesia was neglected and deteriorated rapidly. The government printed money to finance its military expenditures, resulting in hyperinflation exceeding 600% per annum in 1964-1965. Smuggling and collapse of export plantation sectors deprived the government of much-needed foreign exchange income. Consequently, the government was unable to service massive foreign debts it accumulated from both Western and Communist bloc countries. Most of the government budget was spent on the military, resulting in deterioration of infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, and other public facilities. Deteriorating transportation infrastructure and poor harvests caused food shortages in many places. The small industrial sector languished and only produced at 20% capacity due to lack of investment.
Sukarno himself was contemptuous to macroeconomics, and was unable and unwilling to provide practical solutions to the poor economic condition of the country. Instead, Sukarno produced more ideological conceptions such as Trisakti: political sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency, and cultural independence. He advocated Indonesians to be "standing on their own feet" (berdikari) and reach economic self-sufficiency, free from foreign influence.
Towards the end of his rule, Sukarno's lack of interest in economics created a distance between himself and the Indonesian people, who were suffering economically. His face had become bloated by disease and his flamboyance and sexual conquests - which had once endured him to the people - caused public criticism and turned support towards the Army.

Removal from power

On the dawn of 1 October 1965, six of Indonesia's most senior army generals were kidnapped and killed by a movement calling themselves the "30 September Movement" (G30S). Among those killed was Ahmad Yani, while Nasution narrowly escaped. The G30S Movement consisted of members of the Presidential Guards, Brawidjaja Division, and Diponegoro Division, under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel Untung bin Sjamsuri, a known communist sympathiser who participated in the 1948 PKI rebellion. The movement took control of the radio station and the Merdeka Square. They broadcasted statement declaring the kidnappings were meant to protect Sukarno from a coup attempt by CIA-influenced generals. Later, it broadcasted the disbandment of Sukarno's cabinet, to be replaced by a "Revolutionary Council". In Central Java, soldiers associated with the Movement also seized control of Yogyakarta and Solo between 1–2 October, killing two colonels in the process.
Major General Suharto, commander of the Army's strategic reserve command, took control of the army the following morning. Suharto ordered troops to take-over the radio station of Radio Republik Indonesia and Merdeka Square itself. On the afternoon of that day, Suharto issued an ultimatum to the Halim Air Force Base, where the G30S had based themselves and where Sukarno (the reasons for his presence are unclear and were subject of claim and counter-claim), Air Marshal Omar Dhani, and PKI chairman Aidit had gathered. By the following day, it was clear that the incompetently organised and poorly coordinated coup had failed. Sukarno took-up residence in the Bogor Palace, while Omar Dhani fled to Cambodia and Aidit to Central Java. By 2 October, Suharto's soldiers occupied Halim Air Force Base, after a short gunfight. Sukarno's obedience to Suharto's 1 October ultimatum to leave Halim is seen as changing all power relationships. Sukarno's fragile balance of power between the military, political Islam, communists, and nationalists that underlay his "Guided Democracy" was now collapsing.[31] A public funeral for 3 of the 6 who were later found dead was set for Armed Forces Day, October 5.
In early October 1965, a military propaganda campaign began to sweep the country, successfully convincing both Indonesian and international audiences that it was a Communist coup, and that the murders were cowardly atrocities against Indonesian heroes since those who were shot were veteran military officers. The PKI's denials of involvement had little effect.[34] Following the discovery and public burial of the generals' corpses on 5 October, the army along with Islamic organisations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, led a campaign to purge Indonesian society, government and armed forces of the communist party and other leftist organisations. Leading PKI members were immediately arrested, some summarily executed. Aidit was captured and killed on November 1965[33] The purge spread across the country with the worst massacres in Java and Bali. (see: Indonesian killings of 1965–66) In some areas the army organised civilian groups and local militias, in other areas communal vigilante action preceded the army. The most widely accepted estimates are that at least half a million were killed. It is thought that as many as 1.5 million were imprisoned at one stage or another.
As a result of the purge, one of Sukarno's three pillars of support, the Indonesian Communist Party, had been effectively eliminated by the other two, the military and political Islam. The killings and the failure of his tenuous "revolution" distressed Sukarno and he tried unsuccessfully to protect the PKI by referring to the generals' killings as a rimpeltje in de oceaan ("ripple in the sea of the revolution"). He tried to maintain his influence appealing in a January 1966 broadcast for the country to follow him. Subandrio sought to create a Sukarnoist column (Barisan Sukarno), which was undermined by Suharto's pledge of loyalty to Sukarno and the concurrent instruction for all those loyal to Sukarno to announce their support for the army.
On 1 October 1965, Sukarno appointed General Pranoto Reksosamudro as Army Chief to replace the dead Ahmad Yani, but he was forced to give this position to Suharto two weeks later. In February 1966, Sukarno reshuffled his cabinet, sacking Nasution as Defence Minister and abolishing his position of armed forces chief of staff, but Nasution refused to step down. Beginning in January 1966, university students started demonstrating against Sukarno, demanding the disbandment of PKI and for the government to control spiraling inflation. On February 1966, student demonstrators in front of Merdeka Palace were shot at by Presidential Guards, killing the student Arief Rachman Hakim, who was quickly turned into a martyr by student demonstrators.
A meeting of Sukarno's full cabinet was held at the Merdeka Palace on 11 March 1966. As students were demonstrating against the administration, unidentified troops began to assemble outside. Sukarno, Subandrio and another minister immediately left the meeting and went to the Bogor Palace by helicopter. Three pro-Suharto generals (Basuki Rahmat, Amirmachmud, and Mohammad Jusuf) were dispatched to the Bogor palace and they met with Sukarno who signed for them a Presidential Order known as Supersemar. Through the order, Sukarno assigned Suharto to "take all measures considered necessary to guarantee security, calm and stability of the government and the revolution and to guarantee the personal safety and authority [of Sukarno]". The authorship of the document, and whether Sukarno was forced to sign, perhaps even at gunpoint, is a point of historic debate. The effect of the order, however, was the transfer of authority to Suharto. After obtaining the Presidential Order, Suharto had the PKI declared illegal and the party was abolished. He also arrested many high-ranking officials that were loyal to Sukarno on the charge of being PKI members and/or sympathizers, further reducing Sukarno's political power and influence.

The MPRS, now purged from communist and pro-Sukarno elements, began proceedings to impeach Sukarno on the grounds of the following:

1. Toleration 30 September Movement and violation of the constitution by supporting PKI's international communist agenda
2. Negligence of the economy
3. Promotion of national "moral degradation" by Sukarno's blatant womanising behaviour.

On 22 June 1966, Sukarno made the Nawaksara speech in front of the MPRS session, an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to defend himself and his guided democracy system. On August 1966, over Sukarno's objections, Indonesia ended its confrontation with Malaysia and rejoined the United Nations. After making another unsuccessful accountability speech (Nawaksara Addendum) on 10 January 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his presidential title by MPRS on 12 March 1967, in a session chaired by his former ally, Nasution. He was put under house arrest in Bogor Palace, where his health deteriorated due to denial of adequate medical care. He died of kidney failure in Jakarta Army Hospital on 21 June 1970 at age 69. He was buried in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. In recent decades, his grave has been a significant venue in the network of places that Javanese visit on ziarah and for some is of equal significance to those of the Wali Songo.[citation needed]
A semi-official version of the events of 1965–1966 claims that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) chairman Aidit organised the murders of the six generals, using communist sympathisers within the military, to secure PKI's position in case of feared incapacitation of Sukarno, who suffered a mild stroke on 4 August 1965. Others believe that Sukarno and PKI cooperated to kidnap and murder the generals, to forestall a potential Western-backed coup as mentioned in the Gilchrist Document, a view based on Sukarno being in close contact with Aidit and the conspirators in Halim Air Force Base during 1 October. It is believed that upon taking power, the Suharto government deliberately covered-up Sukarno's involvement and sought to solely blame the PKI out of respect of his past services to bring independence to the country, and to protect the integrity of the nation's historic narrative. After the fall of Suharto in 1998, some of his opponents theorise that Suharto orchestrated the assassinations to remove potential rivals for the presidency.

Fatmawati and five of her children with Sukarno,
 including Megawati (far right) andGuruh (center)

Family

Sukarno married Siti Oetari in 1920, and divorced her in 1923 to marry Inggit Garnasih, whom he divorced c. 1943 to marry Fatmawati. Sukarno also married Hartini in 1954, after which he and Fatmawati separated without divorcing. In 1959 he married a third wife, the then 19-year old Japanese hostess Naoko Nemoto (renamed Ratna Dewi Sukarno). In the early 1960s, Sukarno went on to marry 4 more wives: Kartini Manoppo; Yurike Sanger; Heldy Djafar; Amelia de la Rama.
Megawati Sukarnoputri, who served as the fifth president of Indonesia, is his daughter by his wife Fatmawati. Her younger brother Guruh Sukarnoputra (born 1953) has inherited Sukarno's artistic bent and is a choreographer and songwriter, who made a movie Untukmu, Indonesiaku (For You, My Indonesia) about Indonesian culture. He is also a member of the Indonesian People's Representative Council for Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party – Struggle. His siblings Guntur Sukarnoputra, Rachmawati Sukarnoputri and Sukmawati Sukarnoputri have all been active in politics. Sukarno had a daughter named Kartika by Dewi Sukarno. In 2006 Kartika Sukarno married Frits Seegers, the Netherlands-born chief executive officer of the Barclays Global Retail and Commercial Bank. Other offspring include Taufan and Bayu by his wife Hartini, and a son named Toto Suryawan Soekarnoputra (born 1967, in Germany), by his wife Kartini Manoppo.


Awards and Honors

1. Bintang Mahaputera Adipurna (1950)
2. Bintang Gerilya (1952)
3. Bintang Republik Indonesia (1959)
4. Supreme commander of the Revolution (1958)
5. Tri Windu (1947) Surakarta Honorary Knights Cross
6. Honorary Doctorate, University of Belgrade (1956)
7. Honorary Doctorate, Columbia University (1958)
8. International Lenin Peace Prize (1960)
9. Order of the Sacred Treasure (1943)
10. Order of the Rising Sun (1955)

The End

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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 military that previously propped them, was withdrawn. On August 1950, with the last state - State of East Indonesia - dissolving itself, Sukarno declared a Unitary Republic of Indonesia based on newly-formulated provisional constitution of 1950. Both the Federal Constitution of 1949 and the Provisional Constitution of 1950 were parliamentary in nature, where executive authority laid with the prime minister, and which—on paper—limited presidential power. However, even with his formally reduced role, he commanded a good deal of moral authority as Father of the Nation.

The first years of parliamentary democracy proved to be very unstable for Indonesia. Cabinets fell in rapid succession due to the acute differences between the various political parties within the newly-appointed parliament (Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat/DPR). There was severe disagreements on future path of Indonesian state, between nationalists who wanted a secular state (led by Partai Nasional Indonesia first established by Sukarno), the Islamists who wanted an Islamic state (led by Masyumi Party), and the communists who wanted a communist state (led by PKI, only allowed to operate again in 1951). On the economic front, there was severe dissatisfaction with continuing economic domination by large Dutch corporations and the ethnic-Chinese.

In the regions, the Darul Islam rebels under Kartosuwirjo in West Java refused to acknowledge Sukarno's authority and declared a NII (Negara Islam Indonesia - Islamic State of Indonesia) on August 1949. Rebellions in support of Darul Islam also broke-out in South Sulawesi in 1951, and in Aceh in 1953. Meanwhile, pro-federalism members of the disbanded KNIL launched failed rebellion in Bandung (APRA rebellion of 1950), in Makassar in 1950, and in Ambon (Republic of South Maluku revolt of 1950).[21]

Additionally, the military was torn with hostilities between officers originating from the colonial-era KNIL, who wished for a small and elite professional military, and the overwhelming majority of soldiers who started their careers in the Japanese-formed PETA, who were afraid of being discharged and were more known for nationalist-zeal over professionalism.

On 17 October 1952, the leaders of the former-KNIL faction, Army Chief Colonel Abdul Haris Nasution and Armed Forces Chief-of-Staff Major-General Tahi Bonar Simatupang mobilized their troops in a show of force. Protesting against attempts by the DPR to interfere in military business on behalf of the former-PETA faction of the military, Nasution and Simatupang had their troops surround the Merdeka Palace and point the tank turrets in the direction of the said building. Their demand to Sukarno was that the current DPR be dismissed. For this cause, Nasution and Simatupang also mobilized civilian protesters. Sukarno came out of the palace and using nothing but his famed oratory skills, convinced both soldiers and civilians alike to go home. Nasution and Simatupang had been defeated, and both were later dismissed. Nasution, however, would be re-appointed as Army Chief after reconciling with Sukarno in 1955.

In 1954, Sukarno married Hartini, a 30-years-old widow from Salatiga, whom he met during a reception. His third wife, Fatmawati was outraged by this fourth marriage. She left Sukarno and their children, although they never officially divorced. Fatmawati no longer took-up the duties as First Lady, a role subsequently filled by Hartini.

Sukarno casting his vote at the 1955 elections

The 1955 elections produced a new Parliament and a Constitutional Assembly. The election results equally shared power between the antagonistic powers of PNI, Masyumi, Nahdlatul Ulama, and PKI. Hence, domestic political instability continued unabated. Talks in the Constitutional Assembly to produce a new constitution met a deadlock over the issue of whether to include Islamic law.
On the international front, Sukarno organised the Bandung Conference in 1955, with the goal of uniting developing Asian and African countries into a non-aligned movement to counter against the competing superpowers at the time.
Sukarno resented his figurehead position and the increasing disorder of the country's political life. Claiming Western-style democracy was unsuitable for Indonesia, he called for a system of "guided democracy." The Indonesian way of deciding important questions, he argued, was by way of prolonged deliberation designed to achieve a consensus. This was the way problems were solved at the village level, and Sukarno argued it should be the model for the entire nation. He proposed a government based not only on political parties but on "functional groups" composed of the nation's basic elements, which would together form a National Council, through which a national consensus could express itself under presidential guidance.
Vice-President Mohammad Hatta was strongly opposed to Sukarno's guided democracy concept. Citing irreconcilable differences, Hatta resigned from his position in December 1956. Hatta's retirement sent a shockwave across Indonesia, particularly among the non-Javanese ethnicities, who viewed Hatta as their representative in a Javanese-dominated government.
From December 1956 to January 1957, regional military commanders in North Sumatera, Central Sumatera, and South Sumatera provinces took over local government control. They declared a series of military councils which will run their respective areas and refused to accept orders from Jakarta. A similar regional military movement took control of North Sulawesi on March 1957. They demanded the elimination of communist influence in government, equal share in government revenues, and reinstatement of Sukarno-Hatta duumvirate.
Faced with this serious challenge to the unity of the republic, Sukarno declared martial law (Staat van Oorlog en Beleg) on 14 March 1957. He appointed a non-partisan prime minister Djuanda Kartawidjaja, while the military was in the hands of his loyalist General Nasution. Nasution increasingly shared Sukarno's views on the negative impact of western democracy on Indonesia, and he foresaw greater role for the military to bring much-needed discipline to the country.
As a reconciliatory move, Sukarno invited the leaders of the regional councils to Jakarta on 10–14 September 1957, to attend a National Conference (Musjawarah Nasional), which failed to bring a solution to the crisis. On 30 November 1957, an assassination attempt was made by grenade attack against Sukarno when he was visiting a school function in Cikini, Central Jakarta. Six children were killed, but Sukarno did not suffer any serious wounds. The perpetrators were members of the Darul Islam extremist group, under the order of its leader Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo.
By December 1957, Sukarno began to take concrete steps to enforce his authority over the country. On that month, he nationalised 246 Dutch companies which have been dominating Indonesian economy (most notably the NHM, Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, Escomptobank, Internatio, Geo Wehry & Co, Jacobson & Berg, etc.) and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens remaining in Indonesia while confiscating their properties, due to the failure by the Dutch government to continue negotiations on the fate of Netherlands New Guinea as was promised in the 1949 Round Table Conference. Sukarno's economic nationalism policy was followed by issuance Presidential Directive No. 10 of 1959, which banned commercial activities by foreign nationals in rural areas. This rule targeted the ethnic-Chinese, who dominated both the rural and urban retail economy despite the fact that at this time few of them had Indonesian citizenship. This policy resulted in massive relocation of the rural ethnic-Chinese population to urban areas, while approximately 100,000 chose to return to China.
To face the dissident regional commanders, Sukarno and Army Chief Nasution decided to take drastic steps following the failure of Musjawarah Nasional. By utilising regional officers that remained loyal to Jakarta, Nasution organised a series of "regional coups" which ousted the dissident commanders in North Sumatera (Colonel Maludin Simbolon) and South Sumatera (Colonel Barlian) by December 1957. This returned government control over key cities of Medan and Palembang.
On February 1958, the remaining dissident commanders in Central Sumatera (Colonel Ahmad Hussein) and North Sulawesi (Colonel Ventje Sumual) declared PRRI-Permesta Movement aimed at overthrowing the Jakarta government. They were joined by many civilian politicians from the Masyumi Party, such as Sjafruddin Prawiranegara who were opposed to growing influence of communists. Due to their anti-communist rhetoric, the rebels received monetary, weaponry, and manpower aid from the CIA until Allen Lawrence Pope, an American pilot, was shot down after a bombing raid on government-held Ambon on April 1958. On April 1958, central government responded by launching airborne and seaborne military invasions on Padang and Manado, the rebel capitals. By the end of 1958, the rebels have been militarily defeated, and the last remaining rebel guerilla bands surrendered on August 1961.

'Guided Democracy' and increasing autocracy

Sukarno (on top of the steps) reading his decree
on 5 July 1959

The impressive military victories over the PRRI-Permesta rebels and the popular nationalisation of Dutch companies left Sukarno in a very strong position. On 5 July 1959, Sukarno reinstated the 1945 constitution by presidential decree. It established a presidential system which he believed would make it easier to implement the principles of guided democracy. He called the system Manifesto Politik or Manipol—but was actually government by decree. Sukarno envisioned an Indonesian-style socialist society, who adhere to the principle of USDEK:

1. Undang-Undang Dasar '45 (Constitution of 1945)
2. Sosialisme Indonesia (Indonesian socialism)
3. Demokrasi Terpimpin (Guided Democracy)
4. Ekonomi Terpimpin (Commanded Economy).
5. Kepribadian Indonesia (Indonesia's Identity)

The structure of Sukarno's guided democracy in 1962

On March 1960, Sukarno disbanded parliament and replaced it with a new parliament where half the members were appointed by the president (Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat - Gotong Rojong / DPR-GR). On September 1960, he established a Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (Madjelis Permusjawaratan Rakjat Sementara/MPRS) as the highest legislative authority according to the 1945 constitution. MPRS members consisted of members of DPR-GR and members of "functional groups" appointed by the president.
With the backing of the military, Sukarno disbanded the Islamic party Masyumi and Sutan Sjahrir's party PSI, accusing them of involvement with PRRI-Permesta affair. The military arrested and imprisoned many of Sukarno's political opponents, from socialist Sjahrir to Islamic politicians Mohammad Natsir and Hamka. Using martial law powers, the government closed-down newspapers who were critical of Sukarno's policies.
During this period, there were several assassination attempts on Sukarno's life. On 9 March 1960, Daniel Maukar, an Indonesian airforce lieutenant who sympathised with the Permesta rebellion, strafed the Merdeka Palace and Bogor Palace with his MiG-17 fighter jet, attempting to kill the president; he was not injured. On May 1962, Darul Islam agents shot at the president during Eid al-Adha prayers on the grounds of the palace. Sukarno again escaped injury.
On the security front, the military started a series of effective campaigns which ended the long-festering Darul Islam rebellion in West Java (1962), Aceh (1962), and South Sulawesi (1965). Kartosuwirjo, the leader of Darul Islam, was captured and executed in September 1962.
To counterbalance the power of the military, Sukarno started to rely on the support of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). In 1960, he declared his government to be based on Nasakom, a union of the three ideological strands present in Indonesian society: nasionalisme (nationalism), agama (religions), and komunisme (communism). Accordingly, Sukarno started admitting more communists into his government, while developing strong relationship with the PKI chairman Dipa Nusantara Aidit.
In order to increase Indonesia's prestige, Sukarno supported and won the bid for the 1962 Asian Games held in Jakarta. Many sporting facilities such as the Senayan sports complex (including the 100,000-seat Bung Karno Stadium) were built to accommodate the games. There was political tension when the Indonesians refused the entry of delegations from Israel and Taiwan. After the International Olympic Committee put sanctions on Indonesia due to this exclusion policy, Sukarno retaliated by organising a "non-imperialist" competitor event to the Olympic Games, called Games of New Emerging Forces (GANEFO). GANEFO was successfully held in Jakarta on November 1963, and was attended by 2,700 athletes from 51 countries.
As part of his prestige-building program, Sukarno ordered the construction of large monumental buildings such as National Monument (Monumen Nasional), Istiqlal Mosque, CONEFO Building (now the Parliament Building), Hotel Indonesia, and the Sarinah shopping centre to transform Jakarta from a former colonial backwater to a modern city. The modern Jakarta boulevards of Jalan Thamrin, Jalan Sudirman, and Jalan Gatot Subroto was planned and constructed under Sukarno.

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