A time for reflection
A time for reflection
Without much fanfare Indonesia today commemorates the 30th anniversary of the transfer of a special authority by president Sukarno to Lieutenant General Soeharto, his minister/army commander and subsequent successor. Whatever the reason in Sukarno's mind then, the transfer took place when the president- for-life had failed to overcome the mayhem in the aftermath of the abortive communist coup attempt, which took place five months earlier.
Even before the coup tragedy, president Sukarno's regime had been a long story of chaos and despair. The economy was in shambles and politics had become a one-man business marked by Sukarno's anti-West fever, which pushed Indonesia into isolation.
He declared that Indonesia was far from finished and stated that the people were "willing to eat stone for the unfinished revolution". He fed hungry Indonesians with chauvinistic slogans and tranquilizing political mantras. He took all powers into his own hands, banning opposition political parties and closing down their newspapers. Sukarno also made the appointed-members of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly elect him president- for-life.
Complacence led him to fatally misread the situation. His refusal to address the economic troubles was a ruinous mistake. U.S. president Richard Nixon might have exaggerated when he said that Sukarno was "a product of the age of demagogues which started in the formerly colonized countries after World War II." An elder Indonesian statesmen was perhaps closer to the truth when he said that the country's first president was a great nation builder but not a state builder.
Gen. Soeharto picked up the pieces after receiving a special letter of authority from Sukarno on March 11, 1966. With the letter, known as Supersemar, Soeharto banned the Indonesian Communist Party, which had been waging a campaign of mental terror on people at every corner of the archipelago.
Soeharto declared that the source of Old Order's troubles was its violation of the 1945 Constitution. He made the right decision when he made economic development the top priority of his administration. He assembled the leading economists, whom Sukarno left in the cold, to heal the economy's ills. He formed a cabinet of technocrats, an unprecedented move at the time.
Today the fruits of his programs are recognized by other nations. Soeharto has moved Indonesia off the list of the world's poorest countries and has charted an ambitious course for the nation.
But the success story has given way to new problems. Indonesians are demanding greater openness. They want more say in the way the country is governed and greater political development. The people want to exercise their rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, especially the freedoms of expression and association. They want to take their grievances to a judicial body that is independent of the executive branch.
This phenomenon is common to all developing countries, though many have yet to chart the right course and have been plunged back into chaos. South Korea is a recent example of a country that is trying to follow up its economic growth with genuine political progress.
In commemorating the transfer of authority from Sukarno to Soeharto we should reflect on the mistakes committed by the Old Order as we try to pave the way to a better future.