Word: suharto
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...election results came as no great surprise. In Indonesia, the military is omnipresent if not quite omnipotent, and the two main opposition groups - the Muslim United Development Party (P.P.P.) and the Democratic Party of Indonesia (P.D.I.) - had to endorse Suharto for President as a precondition for fielding any candidates at all. "There is no question that Suharto is in charge," said one foreign diplomat shortly before balloting began. "The military is united and they support him. The great mass of people think that things are as they are, and that's that...
...Despite Suharto's triumph at the polls, Indonesia still suffers from the same endemic corruption, the same extremes of wealth and poverty that led, in part, to Sukarno's downfall. One clue to the potential depth of discontent: in the capital of Jakarta, a teeming (pop. about 6 million) city of shopping centers and new high-rise hotels that overlook crumbling shanty towns, the Muslim party, which had campaigned against the regime's abuse of power, won 46.7% of the vote, while Golkar got only 34.8%. Cabled TIME Correspondent Richard Bernstein, who spent ten days touring Indonesia...
Arab Traders. It is questionable whether anyone else could do much better than Suharto at governing Indonesia -a diverse (more than 300 ethnic groups, dozens of languages) archipelago of 3,000 mineral-rich islands scattered over 3,000 miles of ocean. Just as it lured Arab traders and Dutch colonialists in centuries past, Indonesia today entices Western and Japanese businessmen interested in a financial killing. The sight of safari-suited foreigners sitting by the pools of Jakarta's luxury hotels, drinking Bintang beer and talking about pipelines, drill sites and tax laws, is testimony to the seductive pull...
Indonesia, in fact, has become a last frontier of the Pacific. The boom is now a decade old, and Suharto can claim much of the credit for it: shortly after Sukarno's ouster, the government passed laws encouraging foreign investment. Since then, vast sections of a breathtakingly beautiful country have been transformed-though not always in a flattering way. Huge development projects have brought roads, electricity, hospitals and schools to the hinterlands. Nonetheless most of Indonesia remains as it always was: a verdant wilderness populated by agrarian peoples...
...ships or vital spare parts released from customs sheds. "The official just sits behind his desk and opens up a drawer," says the regional manager of an American company. "You start dropping in 10,000-rupiah [$24] notes until he says that's enough and closes the drawer." Suharto, to his credit, has regularly denounced komersial-isasi jabátan (abuse of office). But the sight of generals and poorly paid bureaucrats riding about Jakarta in chauffeur-driven Mercedes limousines indicates that the warnings are not heeded...