Suharto’s impending demise and his legacy

It’s always good to find substantiation of one’s theories. A few years ago I produced an attempt to historicise the New Order, my ‘keeping up appearances’ article (in the book Indonesia Today: The Challenge of History). There I argued that the Suharto regime was not concerned with running Indonesia properly, merely giving the appearance of doing so (by maintaining the appearance of law, the appearance of economic growth, and the appearance of order, rather than actually doing anything substantial).

Now we have the situation where Suharto is all but dead, his vital organs seem to have packed up, but his doctors have announced triumphantly that the life-support machines have maintained the appearance of life. I don’t particularly like Suharto, but I feel sorry for him and think that he should be allowed to die with dignity, without the horrible press crushes around his comatose body.

Suharto’s impending demise raises the broader issue of reassessing his rule and his legacy. A number of his friends overseas have argued that we should overlook his faults (read mass murder, suppression of democracy, suppression of Islam etc) because he brought economic growth to Indonesia. This argument was already been put about during the Cold War as part of the US and Australian support for the anti-communism of Suharto, and found its strongest advocates in academics such as Heinz Arndt.

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