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Indonesian presidential election offers Suharto family political comeback
Sydney Morning Herald - June 30, 2014
If the hopes of many are realised, Suharto's second daughter, Siti Hediati Harijadi, universally known as Titiek, will remarry her ex-husband, presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, that he will win next week's election and she will become the nation's first lady.
It's a popular idea among Prabowo's hardline Muslim supporters, who fear a man without a wife is somehow deficient.
But even in Indonesia's culture of denial about its past, a Suharto in the palace again would be extraordinary, especially at the side of a candidate promising to end corruption.
Titiek amassed a multimillion dollar private art collection and a string of lucrative hotels and business assets under the corrupt and nepotistic system run by her father. She has never faced trial for it.
Titiek married Prabowo in 1983 when her father was at the height of his presidential power and Prabowo was a high-born and ambitious military captain. Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono calls it a "political marriage" between two big families.
They divorced in 2001 when both father and husband were in disgrace. There was one son, Ragowo "Didiet" Hediprasetyo, now a fashion designer in Paris.
Prabowo has been single since the divorce, but in May, the women's wing of PAN, an Islamic party in Prabowo's coalition, began agitating for the couple to reunite so that Indonesia would have a first lady. "This is for our nation," Erwina Yunarti, the head of PUAN, the party's women's wing, told Antara.
The idea moved from the gossip columns to the political stage when Titiek appeared on the podium at one of Prabowo's noisy stadium rallies on June 22.
He introduced her as "the daughter of the big general" and the crowd roared its approval, setting up a chant of "Su-Har-To, Su-Har-To". Later, popular singer Rhoma Irama called her the "candidate for first lady".
Then, on prime time TV last Sunday, Prabowo prolonged the tease, sitting with Titiek to watch the debate between vice-presidential candidates Jusuf Kalla and Hatta Rajasa. The pair looked uncomfortable together and left separately.
Whenever she is asked about it, Titiek plays a dead bat, but Prabowo's campaign manager, Tantowi Yahya, told Fairfax Media, "of course the reunion is everybody's wish", and was certainly not a political strategy to reduce a Prabowo negative. "Oh no, we'd never do that ... It's very private matter and none of us here talk about it," Tantowi insisted.
Nostalgia for the Suharto era has boomed in the second, indecisive, term of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, partly feeding Prabowo's appeal as the "strong" candidate. Titiek herself rode the sentiment into national parliament – she won a central Java seat in the April parliamentary elections for her father's old party, Golkar.
But for Prabowo, who promises on the stump: "We will fight poverty, we will fight corruption," the irony of a Suharto hook-up is crushing.
A 1999 Time magazine investigation revealed that at least $73 billion of Indonesia's money had passed through Suharto family's hands and that, despite the Asian financial crisis of 1998, the family still controlled $15 billion worth of "cash, shares, corporate assets, real estate, jewellery and fine art".
Titiek was the family's art collector as well as being the business partner of her brother-in-law – Prabowo's brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo – who now co-ordinates and funds Prabowo's campaign and contributes unlimited use of his private jet.
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