Word: suharto
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...perfected by a 20th century general who would rule the country for more than 30 years, as if he himself were a god with the right to parcel out prosperity and peace, a heaven-sent arbiter of life and death. Even after he was forced to relinquish power, Suharto dwelt among his countrymen as if invulnerable to mortal retribution, as if Indonesia could not act against the man who was once its infallible, singular autocrat. When he died on Sunday, January 27 in Jakarta, at the age of 86, the islands of Indonesia shuddered...
...years since a popular uprising forced him to resign the presidency have not brought Indonesia quiet. The predominantly Muslim country's Islamic extremists, long repressed by Suharto's military, came roaring to life, some finding common cause with al-Qaeda, fomenting attacks not once but twice on Indonesia's paradaisical enclave of Bali - the last refuge of the islands' old Hindu gods...
Stability had been Suharto's gift to his country. He had come to power at the head of a junta of generals in 1965, overthrowing the country's flamboyant and charismatic first president, Sukarno, whose friendship with Beijing and predeliction for Communists in the government had brought the country to the brink of economic collapse and civil war. Ensconced in power, Suharto proceeded to purge the country of Communism and anyone suspected of Communist sympathy. No one knows how many died. One estimate has it at 500,000 - among them many Indonesians of Chinese descent. The Communist Party was outlawed...
...result was a cowed and pacified country ruled by a new President -Suharto - with a practiced beatific smile, anti-Communist credentials which a Cold War-obsessed America would reward, a secular philosophy that tamped down religious extremism, and a military that no one could question. He brought an end to the hyperinflation of Sukarno's reign and eradicated the country's widespread hunger by establishing Indonesian self-sufficiency in rice. Stability attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment. "Suharto built Indonesia and we have him to thank for modern buildings, ports and harbors," says Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, a former mines...
...Indonesia also made it possible for a small group of Suharto family members and cronies to earn billions of dollars from monopolies on everything from cars to cloves. Foundations set set up during the New Order regime, as his reign was known, are alleged by anti-corruption watchdogs to have amassed billions of dollars. The Suharto family's wealth was estimated by TIME in 1999 at $15 billion. Transparency International, a group monitoring government corruption around the world, reported his personal wealth at closer to $35 billion...