Suharto dies with chequered legacy

Former Indonesian President Suharto has finally succumbed to his illnesses, according to AP and BBC. According to an AP report, he died at 2.10pm (Singapore and Malaysia time) today. He was 86.

JAKARTA (Indonesia): Former Indonesian president Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday. He was 86.

"He has died,'' Dr Christian Johannes told The Associated Press, adding that he died at 1.10pm (2.10pm Malaysian time).

Dozens of doctors on Suharto's medical team had been rushed to the Pertamina Hospital in the capital, Jakarta, after his blood pressure fell suddenly Saturday night. Suharto had slipped out of consciousness for the first time in more than three weeks of treatment, doctors said.

Suharto, had been in intensive care with lung, heart and kidney failure since he was admitted to the hospital on Jan 4. Over the past week his physicians had spoken of a recovery, but by Sunday that had changed dramatically. - AP

Suharto's downfall was triggered by the turmoil during the Asian financial crisis in 1997/1998. Indonesia fell like a house of cards, and he agreed to a bail-out package by the International Monetary Fund.

The strict IMF-mandated fuel price hikes led to riots and deaths in Jakarta, and culminated in the political end of the Indonesian strongman, who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for three decades.

Former IMF managing director Michel Camdessus acknowledged that IMF was the root cause for the fall of Suharto in an interview with New York Times when he resigned in Nov 1999.

"We created the conditions that obliged President Suharto to leave his job," Mr Camdessus said. "That was not our intention."

Whether the change in the political scene in Indonesia was by chance or design, nobody will forget the chaos in the country.

And nobody will forget the famous picture of Mr Camdessus, with his arms crossed in what was seen as an arrogant gesture, overseeing Suharto signing the agreement for an IMF bailout package worth nearly US$50 billion. The picture was widely used to personify Asia's loss of its independence.

Suharto's funeral will probably be well attended as part of international diplomatic and state protocol.

But in reality, he had few friends left during his dying days. Among them were the former PMs of Malaysia and Singapore -- Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew respectively -- and the Sultan of Brunei.

His few friends will always remember the man who ended Konfrontasi, which was a euphemism for the war started by former Indonesian president Sukarno against the creation of an enlarged Malaysia during the 1960s.

But Suharto will not be remembered fondly by the new generation of Indonesians and Asians who despise his regime of corruption, cronyism and nepotism, despite the obvious national economic development during his rule.

Konfrontasi Again

While Singapore is sorting out its problems in the region, its two immediate neighbours -- Indonesia and Malaysia -- are having bigger headaches.

They have yet to fully resolve the competing claims over an oil-rich area off Borneo and were almost on the brink of a war.

According to The Straits Times this week, the Indonesian Parliament has called for a tough line on reported Malaysian military incursions, with two MPs saying Malaysians on the wrong side of a disputed border should be shot. This is definitely an escalation of earlier rhetoric.

'Once in a while we need to shoot them,' said Mr Soeripto, a member of the parliamentary commission on defence and foreign affairs at a hearing with Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono and armed forces chiefs at the House of Representatives yesterday.

'Don't be afraid if something escalates from the shooting. We have four million volunteers who are prepared to die,' he was quoted as saying by news portal Detikcom.

The meeting was called to discuss the latest flare up in the border spat with Malaysia over the disputed oil-rich region which the Indonesians call Ambalat, in the sea off Borneo.

He said that he deployed warships to drive the intruders out, but added that the Malaysian navy also entered Indonesian waters around Ambalat 35 times last year.

The dispute over Ambalat took a turn for the worse two years ago, when Malaysia's state oil company Petronas awarded an oil concession to a subsidiary of oil giant Shell in an area where Indonesia had been granting oil concessions.

There was a standoff in the disputed area a month later, almost pushing both sides to the brink of war but tensions eased after they agreed to settle the dispute diplomatically.

We can definitely see Konfrontasi all over again should Indonesia lose its claim over Ambalat. Indonesia is still seething over the loss of two tiny islands near Ambalat in the Celebes Sea -- Sipadan and Ligitan -- to Malaysia in a legal battle in 2002.

No wonder Indonesia is so protective of its territory and its sand although it has over 17,000 islands.

PS: The Malaysia-Indonesia border dispute had translated into cyber warfare, according to this interesting article. The Indonesian phrase "Ganyang Malaysia" or "Crush Malaysia" -- used during Indonesia's resistance towards the creation of Malaysia in the 1960s -- had been used to deface some Malaysian websites. So far, there's no known instance of "Ganyang Singapura" in Singapore cyberspace.