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.