Moertopo: Problem solver and straight talker

Moertopo: Problem solver and straight talker

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

HONG KONG (JP): At the time of trauma and travail for
Indonesia, one Indonesian who comes readily to mind, for a very
relevant reason, is the late Gen. Ali Moertopo.

When I first met the late Ali Moertopo he was a Brigadier
General. It was in 1966 or 1967. Moertopo was busily engaged in
the task of trying to bring Sukarno's last frenzied geopolitical
fling to a face-saving end.

As (then) General Soeharto set about consolidating his power
in the wake of the attempted communist coup on Sept. 30, 1965, it
was essential that the armed confrontation between Indonesia on
the one hand --- and Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand
and Great Britain on the other -- had to be brought to a speedy
conclusion. Ali Moertopo and his happy band of wheeler dealers
were trying to bring that end about.

They were extremely pragmatic about this task. The man who
later became Armed Forces commander, and Minister of Defense,
Gen. Benny Moerdani became a counter clerk at the Garuda office
in Bangkok in order to facilitate Moertopo's contacts with
Britain's MI6, its foreign intelligence organization. Moertopo,
when I first met him, was all smiles as he told me, with
disarming frankness, how he intended to bring the end of
konfrontasi about -- and, even more important, his high hopes for
a more stable Indonesia which might begin to attract foreign
investment.

Indonesia has had only two Presidents. Both were free from any
limitation on the time they could spend in the presidency. Both
achieved broadly similar results as a consequence.

By 1966, Sukarno's profligate ways had run the Indonesian
economy into the ground. Hyperinflation had taken hold.
The rupiah was fast declining. Those foreign investors who did
give Southeast Asia a second thought, certainly did not waste it
on Indonesia. Moertopo sought to change all that. So did his
boss, Soeharto. But it was a touch- and-go affair. Nothing was
preordained. Indonesia's swift slide towards communism seemed to
have been averted. But an equally swift descent towards chaos
seemed just as likely.

A biography written at that time called Soeharto The Smiling
General. For me, the general who smiled, and accomplished the
most, was Moertopo.

All this came vividly to mind on May 22, as the BBC World
Service besmirched its reputation for accuracy. The BBC
repeatedly broadcast a profile of Soeharto. First there was a
record of Sukarno saying, in English, that he hereby appointed
Soeharto armed forces chief. The profile then went on to say
that, having been so elevated, Soeharto "went on" to destroy the
communists after September 1965. This is of course, telling
history backwards.

It is worth remembering that, even in Indonesia, if anyone had
predicted on Sept. 29, 1965 that a certain Soeharto, the
commander of Kostrad, would be the next president of Indonesia,
he would have been laughed out of court. Even Indonesians would
have asked "Soeharto, who is he?". Even the assassins who killed
six top generals 24 hours later were, presumably, similarly
ignorant.

However, from Sept. 30 onwards, Soeharto was inevitably thrust
into the limelight. He first sought to restore the unity and pre-
eminence of ABRI in Indonesian affairs, then tried to bring some
measure of stability to Indonesian politics, and finally
attempted to revive Indonesian expectations of an accepted
leadership role within Southeast Asia.

At the start, it was a seat-of-the-pants operation as Soeharto
and Moertopo sought to catch up with, and control, a fast-moving
unpredictable situation.

President Sukarno saw nothing wrong with the policies he had
pursued. He was so sure that the Indonesian people still loved
him. His oratory could still move huge crowds. Slowly student
demonstrations, in part sensibly stimulated and encouraged by
Moertopo and his merry men, began to whittle away at Sukarno's
prestige, as the students lobbied for a New Order government to
replace Sukarno's old order.

Amidst the regional and domestic turmoil, I am sure that
Moertopo did several things of which moralists would probably
disapprove. Years later I learned that, at one desperate stage,
with their limited funds running out, his aides engaged in a
little discreet piracy to keep things going. Political turbulence
often requires creative responses. I am sure that Ali Moertopo
was often very creative. Moertopo never pretended that he was
always right.

I am recalling this past history for the same reason that I am
remembering Moertopo now.

I often think of Moertopo -- and not merely when events in
Indonesia hit the headlines, but in many contrasting
circumstances in different places -- because of one crucial
quality in the man: he was never a sycophant. I have to stress
that. He was never a sycophant.

More than most politicians, Moertopo knew how to combine
absolute allegiance to his leader, with complete loyalty to
giving frank and even harsh assessments of reality confronting
him.

Of course, Moertopo often communicated in Javanese.
Javanese is like Japanese, a language which lays great stress on
numerous honorifics and elaborate circumlocutions. It can be
argued that the language does not encourage plain direct speaking
as much as some other languages do. Nevertheless, I am sure that
Moertopo told Soeharto what he needed to know -- the plain
unvarnished truth.

Conversely, and critically, in those days at least, Soeharto
recognized his own lack of political skills and awareness, and
had the good sense to appreciate the unvarnished truth which
Moertopo dished up to him.

This give-and-take between the two generals highlights an oft-
forgotten fact. Sycophancy is a two-way process between those few
in leadership positions who expect sycophancy, and the many who
are willing to flatter their leaders by providing it.