Taking a fresh look at Soeharto's New Order

Taking a fresh look at Soeharto's New Order

Suharto, Indonesia's Last Sultan; By Keith Loveard; Horizon
Books Singapore, 1999; 400 pages; US$26

SINGAPORE (JP): Soeharto wants to be remembered as a hero.
Popular Indonesian history describes him valiantly leading the
Army to victories against Dutch imperialists and communist
assassins. He is portrayed as a good man: a family man and rural
man who sacrificed everything for his country.

He does not want to be a villain, let alone be remembered in a
foreign correspondent's memoirs as the man who sat unashamedly
enjoying a bowl of soup while fellow revolutionaries risked life
and limb to defeat the Dutch in Yogyakarta. Nor does he want to
be implicated in the murder of generals as an overly ambitious
soldier or suspected part-time communist.

Suharto, Indonesia's Last Sultan is an apt title for a book on
the man who revived and perfected the modern-day kraton
(sultanate). The making of this kraton and the personalities
involved fall under Keith Loveard's gaze and enter his critical
passages.

Loveard does not set out to praise or defame Indonesia,
although he does badly tarnish Soeharto's image. He writes with
affection and frustration for Indonesia, whether he is describing
meeting with paranormals in Java, Acehnese rebels or foreign
minister Ali Alatas, or taking a flight on a luxury jet owned by
Soeharto's daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, better known as
Tutut.

His memoirs are too personal and, sometimes, too comic to be
mainstream news, but they are too valuable to go unpublished.
Weaving together a series of feature articles, Loveard struggles
to free himself from the vice of journalese until he drifts
uncertainly into personal recollections of first-hand experiences
and behind-the-scenes conversations with famous and infamous
Indonesians. Yet he consciously clings to a journalist's quest
for objectivity and belief in showing a story from several
perspectives. He seldom dares share his own opinions; the words
of others do nicely.

Suharto, Indonesia's Last Sultan is not a book for foreigners
lacking a basic knowledge of Indonesia, nor is it for those
expecting a textbook presentation of Soeharto's 32-year reign.
Rather, it for foreigners and locals familiar with Indonesia's
unique way of working (or not working), its people's behavior and
power structures.

On Soeharto's communist witch-hunt, Loveard writes: "Fear
seeped into the heart of every Indonesian. Even in the post-
Soeharto era, there are many people who are afraid to speak out,
aware no doubt that the wind of reform could just as easily shift
to another wave of repression. While this apprehension is
probably unwarranted, given the mood of change in the military in
a world where stand-over tactics are no longer popular, it is the
army people fear most, the machine that put Soeharto's subtle
reign of terror in place." (p. 49)

Readers must appreciate Indonesia, particularly its politics,
to appreciate this book because of Loveard's tendency to drop
names and events without much context or background. This is
particularly true when the reader finds himself in an olio of
news, personal experiences and interviews wrapped neatly into a
couple of paragraphs.

Loveard is reluctant to drop seemingly insignificant details
which must mean a lot to him. His editor must have conceded it is
Loveard's diary and these things are not published in the press.
Besides, dry nonfiction on Soeharto's rise and fall is flooding
the market, along with a heap of horror stories and critical
literature once banned by his regime.

Unlike most other works of nonfiction dealing with Indonesian
politics, Loveard dwells on the mysteries of Javanese
supernatural phenomena and the way they helped Soeharto gain and
maintain power. He goes so far as to reason that Soeharto may
have lost his power because of his "arrogance" toward these
phenomena. Loveard, demonstrating his determination to understand
Indonesia, devotes a chapter to the role of magic and the
supernatural in the lives of Indonesians, Javanese or otherwise.

Not surprisingly, he ends this chapter by acknowledging some
belief in magic: "As a Westerner witnessing the rapid
transformation of urban Indonesian life, it seems too easy to
assume everybody is 'modern'. Many still believe in the ways of
their parents and grandparents. Being 'modern' doesn't mean you
have to throw out the past. Besides, in the supposedly
sophisticated West, how many people read horoscopes? In the end,
it's a matter of whether you believe or not. Skeptics won't see
magic. Believers see it everywhere. For people like me who see
indications of the irrational, it's hard not to believe just a
little." (p. 99)

Sit back if you are into Indonesia and let the book's tide of
events flow over you. Do not worry about who's who, and do not
get caught flipping back and forth through the book trying to
figure out names, positions and context. If you simply read it,
this book is an enjoyable tour of the sideshows that surround big
news events in Indonesia, particularly the human side which is
often edited out of the news. The book is up-to-date in covering
President Habibie's surprise gamble of offering East Timor
independence in January and in describing life after Soeharto's
fall in 1998. It is also amusing, as any tragedy should be.

The book, launched in Singapore in July, unfortunately is not
yet available in Indonesia. According to the publisher's public
relations office in Jakarta, the book is still being studied by
the Attorney General's Office -- a common procedure applied to
both local and foreign publications.

-- Prapti Widinugraheni