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For presidential hopeful Prabowo, hero bid for Suharto may be a blunder
Jakarta Globe - June 9, 2014
It's a topic that gets a fresh airing every year ahead of National Heroes Day on Nov. 10, when a handful of named are inscribed to the list of sometimes polarizing figures to whom Indonesia owes not just its independence, but also its current progress.
This year, however, the debate over Suharto, whose death in 2008 made him eligible for the honor, has come several months early, after one of his former sons-in-law, presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto, reportedly promised to grant the former strongman the elusive title of national hero.
Various local media quoted Prabowo, a former commander of the Army Special Forces, or Kopassus, making the pledge during a meeting with members of an organization claiming to represent the families of retired and serving military and police personnel.
Among those in attendance at the meeting in Jakarta last Tuesday was Siti Hediati Hariyadi, better known as Titiek Suharto – the former president's daughter and Prabowo's ex-wife.
For many observers, the statement comes as no surprise, and is seen as a natural extension of a mounting nostalgia for the Suharto years, marked by, among other characteristics, narrower wealth inequality, a stable political scene (because the rubber-stamp parliament was largely a front), and an absence of Islamist terrorism – albeit the press was heavily gagged, political dissent was cracked down on, and extra-judicial killings by the military were commonplace.
But for those who fought in 1998 to remove Suharto from office are horrified by Prabowo's promise to afford him hero status.
"If Suharto is a hero, then who's the villain?" asks Adian Napitupulu, one of the protesters from 1998 who famously led the storming of the House of Representatives on May 16, 1998, five days before Suharto resigned. "If he's the hero, then that makes us the villains," Adian says.
The notion of recognizing as a hero someone who was unseated by popular unrest is also anathema to J.J. Rizal, a historian at the University of Indonesia, who says Prabowo's move can be seen as an attempt to rewrite history.
"Prabowo's statement is an obvious example of the kind of short-term memory the government elites have regarding this nation's past," he says. "It's a statement that implies that [he is] willing to bury the truth of our history."
Suharto and his cronies, Rizal says, "created incredible pain for this nation." "The ruinous mistakes he made during his long term left not just material losses, but also mental scars, which we as Indonesians continue to bear even today," he says.
Rizal also notes that the camp of Joko Widodo, the other presidential candidate in the two-horse race, has been notably silent on the issue of Prabowo's statement. That, he says, is because Joko suffers from the same "historical amnesia" as those seeking to have Suharto recognized as a hero.
Rizal points to Joko's proposal last August to rename Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat – the road running along the western perimeter of the National Monument, or Monas, park in Central Jakarta and passing in front of the National Museum – to Jalan Suharto.
The plan by Joko, the Jakarta governor, was widely panned at the time, and while two of the four roads around the Monas square have since been renamed, the western stretch has not. (The fourth, Jalan Medan Merdeka Timur, running along the park's east, was to be renamed in honor of Ali Sadikin, a former Jakarta governor, but the change has not been approved by the central government.)
"We have problems regarding government officials who come from the New Order" – Suharto's regime – "and have a problem comprehending history," Rizal says. "It's terrible that we can't even determine who is a role model and who we should condemn."
He says that the two candidates' take on the past makes them equally unsuitable to run for the highest office in the land. "We're in a crisis where we lack leadership figures," he says. "Prabowo is a figure who has strong ties to Suharto's regime, while Joko is blind to the historical facts."
Contributed a lot
Some, however, concede that Suharto oversaw a rapid rate of development during his three decades in office, including bringing about near-universal literacy, tamping population growth through an extensive family planning program, and ushering in an economic boom that was ultimately undone by the corruption of his government.
"He certainly contributed a lot to the development of Indonesia," says Bonnie Triyana of Historia magazine. In deciding whether to grant him national hero status, though, Bonnie says the debate should center on Suharto as "an institution, rather than only as a person."
Nevertheless, he argues against Prabowo's proposal, given that Suharto stood against all the democratic conventions for which the protesters of 1998 gave their lives, and which Indonesians today almost take for granted, including freedom of the press, direct elections and the right to gather for protests.
"Everyone has an important role in a history. But what Prabowo calls for is based on a misreading of history," Bonnie says. "He's undermining our ideals of reform. The purpose of the reforms was to create fair democracy and to fix the rotten conditions that we had during Suharto's military regime. If Prabowo wants to grant him national hero status, he will be disrespecting the sacrifices of the reformers."
Bonnie calls Suharto's downfall "the turning point for Indonesia, and the start of the democratic reforms."
"The current batch of politicians owes a priceless debt to those who had sacrificed their lives to dethrone Suharto," he says. "It's because of the reforms that today we enjoy the freedoms that we have. There may be many shortcomings, but at least we're free from the military's dominance."
Political blunder
Bonnie cautions Prabowo to "think carefully" about the hero status for Suharto. But for the candidate, it may be too late to back down, says Asvi Warman Adam, a historian with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI.
"Whatever statement a presidential candidate makes to the public, they're obliged to fulfill it once they assume office," he says. To that end, he adds, Prabowo's statement wasn't so much a show of support for his late former father-in-law, but a political blunder.
"Prabowo will be trapped between his obligation to keep his promise, and the unpopularity of the idea," Asvi says.
The historian acknowledges that Suharto was responsible for much of Indonesia's development through to the late-1990s, but that should not entitle him to recognition as a national hero in a democratic state.
"To recognize someone as a hero, they have to have high moral integrity and decency," he says. "Suharto was corrupt and linked to several human rights violations. With such a track record, is he really qualified to be a national hero? No sane person would say he is. "That said, however, Suharto was the great developer of Indonesia," Asvi goes one. "But he was also the great destroyer of this nation."
Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/presidential-hopeful-prabowo-hero-bid-suharto-may-blunder/.
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