Habibie and Soeharto

Habibie and Soeharto

During the Soeharto regime, the people were witness to at
least five categories of deceptive information -- regarding the
wealth of government officials and their families, politics,
cultural and social values, justice and economic conditions. Such
a situation, obviously, cannot be allowed to continue, for unless
all this is abandoned by the current government, people will
naturally assume that Habibie and his cabinet ministers, and his
military commanders as well are still toiling in the shadow of
Soeharto.

The past three months -- plus the availability of
sophisticated means of communications, well-trained financial
experts, good lawyers and a professional military and police
force -- have not been enough for the government to investigate
the wealth accumulated by Soeharto and his family and that of the
business tycoons who all have helped to swell Indonesia's private
debt burden to tens of billions of U.S. dollars.

If more valuable time is intentionally wasted with the aim
that Indonesians will forget the past, we will all be in for a
blow. The people have suffered for too long and have become
extremely sensitive. The tiniest spark may be sufficient to
ignite a conflagration, and the most insignificant clash could
get blown up into a ferocious upheaval.

The public would then assume that the new head of state, named
to hastily replace Soeharto, has turned out to lack in
professionalism. This is, perhaps, the reason why (Moslem
intellectual) Dr. Nurcholish Madjid criticized President Habibie
for having been unable, in this time of crisis, to communicate
with popular leaders such as Gus Dur, Megawati Soekarnoputri and
even with Amien Rais, who was one of his associates in the
Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals.

If Habibie feels closer to the remaining members of the old
(Soeharto) clique rather than to the reformers -- who are certain
to eventually become the main pillars of Indonesia's future --
then no one can blame the Indonesian people for not wanting to
see Habibie, or his kin, at the top of the Indonesian power
pyramid.

-- Merdeka, Jakarta