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Suharto was born in a small village near Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. His Javanese peasant parents divorced not long after his birth, and he was passed between foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Suharto served in Japanese-organised Indonesian security forces. Indonesia's independence struggle saw him joining the newly formed Indonesian army. Suharto rose to the rank of major general following Indonesian independence. An attempted coup on 30 September 1965 was countered by Suharto-led troops and was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party. The army subsequently led an anti-communist purge, and Suharto wrested power from Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. He was appointed acting president in 1967 and President the following year. Support for Suharto's presidency was strong throughout the 1970s until mid-1990s but eroded following the 1997 � 98 Asian financial crisis. He resigned from the presidency in May 1998 and died in 2008. The legacy of Suharto's 32-year rule is debated both in Indonesia and abroad. Under his "New Order" administration, Suharto constructed a strong, centralised and military-dominated government able to maintain sustainable stability, which exercised absolute control over a sprawling and diverse Indonesian state. To provide legitimacy for his rule, Suharto sought to develop Indonesia's economy and improve the livelihoods of Indonesians. His government set-up pro-growth macroeconomic policies originally arranged by a group of American-trained economists, while encouraging a group of mostly ethnic-Chinese businessmen who were dependent on him to expand their businesses. By the late 1990s, these companies have become large conglomerations which still dominate Indonesian economy today. He also sought to attract foreign investment into Indonesia, in view of the small domestic capital base at the beginning of his rule. For most of his presidency, Indonesia experienced significant economic growth and industrialisation, dramatically improving health, education and living standards. Suharto's investor-friendly policies, his mild foreign policies compared with his predecessor Sukarno, and an avowedly anti-Communist stance won him the economic and diplomatic support of the international community, particularly the West, Japan, and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. By the 1990s, corruption and the authoritarianism of his New Order led to discontent among Indonesians. By the 1990s, Suharto's children was allowed to set-up businesses that monopolised key sectors of economy, ventures which mostly relied on Suharto's political influence. Such nepotistic policies greatly damaged support for Suharto's rule amongst the new upper and middle class created by New Order's decades of high growth. Suharto denied many political and democratic freedoms and rights to the Indonesian people, in the name of securing stability required for economic development of the country. Additionally, Suharto was accused of employing brutality against his political opponents, most notably the anti-communist massacres at the beginning of his rule. Under his order, Indonesia controversially invaded and annexed East Timor. However, in the years after his presidency, attempts to try him on charges of corruption failed because of his poor health and remaining strong support for Suharto within Indonesia. |
