Indonesia's flight from modernity

Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin remembers Gen. Ali Moertopo against the background of Indonesia's current crisis. This is the second of two articles.

HONG KONG (JP): Some day, somebody should write a book on "Sycophancy In Asian Politics". If it was properly done by an author of stature, who felt no obligation to please anybody , it could be an invaluable as well as a wide-ranging volume.

This is not to suggest in any way that sycophancy is merely an Asian problem. Sycophancy, it goes without saying, is a universal phenomenon. For example, I know of one long-reigning husband and wife team, in charge of a famous Western company, who receive, and probably by now expect, a degree of sycophancy similar to that which once afflicted the two Marcoses.

But at least that company exists in a society which is heading towards modernity, and which provides, in the political arena, impersonal checks and balances, whereby dissenting views are heard, differing viewpoints are considered, and it is very difficult indeed for a leader to become too puffed-up with his own infallibility.

Colonialism often instituted a veneer of modernity. But the colonialists, fearing for their legitimacy, usually tried to encourage political indifference among the masses in their colonies, plus a high degree of sycophancy within the local elite. The tragedy has been that too many of the post- colonialists have behaved in a broadly similar way.

Essentially, having established himself politically, having instituted a degree of Indonesian political stability and initiated progress towards economic development and regional cooperation, President Soeharto led Indonesia on a flight away from modernity.

That was Indonesia's, not just Soeharto's, fundamental political and economic failure. Excessive sycophancy became the fundamental political principle of a deeply flawed authoritarian regime. The leadership demanded it. The elite provided it. The flight away from modernity gathered pace particularly in the last decade and a half.

Of course, Soeharto set about providing the trappings of an economically developed state. But the more he succeeded in providing the outward shows, the more profound was his failure to also endow Indonesia with the inner substance of modernity: a press than can fully and freely print differing views; an elite that is used to discussing and debating the complexities of development; a bureaucracy which can impersonally and uncorruptly regulate the economic growing pains accompanying globalization; a political system which allows various interests to openly compete, and reconcile their differences.

Even here, the blame does not simply lie either with Indonesians or even just with Soeharto. Foreign investors were among the worst of sycophants as they over-extolled the Indonesian economic achievement in their pursuit of profit and rushed into the arena, choosing which of Soeharto's six children would be their partner.

They should have known that, by doing this, they were participating in a dangerous political game -- and actually weakening a house built precariously on shifting political sands. When those sands did begin to shift, then another form of sycophancy took hold, as investors rushed for the exits like a mindless herd of thoughtless cattle.

The blame does not simply lie with greedy businessmen either. Foreign governments, especially the world's sole superpower, the United States, allowed themselves, whenever they thought about Indonesia -- which was actually very rarely -- to be lulled, as Indonesians also were, by the bald statistics of economic growth. The GNP was going up by leaps and bounds, so why worry?

But Indonesia's real GNP -- its Growth in National Politics -- was sinking fast. Indonesia's erstwhile allies like the United States said nothing.

There was something dreadfully shabby, even despicable, as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivered a verbal hint that Soeharto should go, at the very last minute of his presidency, while President Bill Clinton was too cowardly to say what he was probably thinking out loud.

The time for telling Soeharto that he had gone too far along the path of one-man rule was long since past. As in Manila in 1986, so in Jakarta in 1998, the U.S. it seemed, rushed in to claim a wholly undeserved "success" for itself, when, in reality, the effort of poor Indonesians, mainly students, was belatedly making up for all those years when the United States was content to co- exist with the ever more willful dictator.

Yet the greatest blame must still lie with the weak-kneed sycophancy of the Indonesian elite. The demonstrations by the students in the House of Representatives, and the rampages of the mobs of poverty stricken slum dwellers in Medan, Jakarta and Solo (and maybe other places we do not yet know about) had to make up for, at the cost of many lives lost, the craven sycophancy of the elite.

Were Ali Moertopo alive today he would be insisting that, March 1998 should never be forgotten. The Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly was in session. 1000 members of the elite were appointed to it. To be sure, they had to sign certificates of allegiance to Soeharto before they could take their seats. The harsh -- and infamous -- fact remains that not a single member raised any solid objection whatsoever, when Soeharto was nominated for a seventh term for which he was manifestly unfit.

That was sycophancy gone mad. Soeharto responded in kind. All the endless servile sycophancy had implanted his conviction that he could reestablish the Javanese monarchy, and make his daughter his successor. Sycophancy had its most dangerous result. He thought -- and perhaps still thinks -- that he was the King who could do no wrong.

Ali Moertopo knew in his bones that all leaders inevitably do wrong unless their advisers give them the truth as the advisers know it.

He saw the sad writing on the Indonesian wall as to where Soeharto's ego and susceptibility to flattery would inevitably lead. The Moertopo-Soeharto teamwork that had built the regime feel apart as sycophancy increasingly sustained it.

The clearest sign that Soeharto was all set to go wherever sycophancy would take him came when Soeharto had his autobiography ghost-written for him, telling of his great achievements. There was no mention anywhere in its pages of the crucial political role played by Ali Moertopo, and another Gen. Sudjono Humardhani, in establishing Soeharto in power. They were absolutely crucial advisers -- but they were eliminated from the story. In the book Soeharto, of course, did it all himself. Sycophancy had reached its ultimate stage -- the rewriting of history.

Hence the brief retelling of what really happened, at the beginning of this article.

After that small but so significant incident, in which Moertopo, the honest ally, became a non-person, it became virtually inevitable that Soeharto would never step down in time to save his achievements. Soeharto, surrounded by sycophants, ended up with virtually the same accomplishment as Sukarno. Both leaders took the nation from the mountain-top of expectation to the depths of economic devastation.

Moertopo died suddenly in the mid 1980s. To their shame, the sycophants paid scant attention to his passing. He was the only Indonesian I know who could have told Soeharto to his face that he risked ruining his record and his nation. But had Moertopo lived, the Indonesian sycophantic state would almost certainly have prevented Ali from ever delivering such a message in person.

Window: Colonialism often instituted a veneer of modernity. But the colonialists, fearing for their legitimacy, usually tried to encourage political indifference among the masses in their colonies, plus a high degree of sycophancy within the local elite.