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