Suharto Should Step Down

For President Suharto the violence in Jakarta and throughout Indonesia has to be a bitter flashback to the days 32 years ago when, as head of the army, he seized power from independence leader Sukarno. The collapse of public confidence like that which doomed Sukarno now engulfs his successor and his rapaciously wealthy family. Surely Suharto saw the anger rising, and just as surely he has proved incapable of heading off the tempest.

Jakarta has been slipping into chaos since police shot and killed six students in the capital earlier this week. Food riots and student clashes with police have wracked the country, the most populous in Southeast Asia. The U.S. government has ordered nonessential embassy staff and their families to leave Jakarta and has advised Americans not to travel there.

President Suharto, who cut short a visit to Egypt and returned to Indonesia, hinted in Cairo that he might be willing to step aside. He told an Indonesian reporter, “If I’m no longer trusted, I’ll become a pandito (sage) and become closer to God.” For the sake of his country, that’s just what he should do.

His crony government built modern Indonesia but clearly is unable to institute badly needed reforms, particularly in the realms of industry and finance, which are largely controlled by presidential friends and members of his family.

Despite a $43-billion rescue package from the International Monetary Fund, he failed to get a grip on the currency crisis triggered by last summer’s Asian economic collapse. The economy is in free fall. Inflation has climbed to 40%, factories and business are closing and vast numbers of Indonesians find themselves jobless. The value of their money was already lost. The rupiah has fallen 70% since July. There are few goods for sale and little with which to buy them anyway.

The old general has blamed strictures in the IMF loans, but Korea and Thailand, both with conditional IMF loans, have been able to get back on even keel.

In Indonesia, Suharto’s family and friends remain the very model of crony capitalism, sitting pretty in the boardrooms of banks and monopolies still open for business. The inequity has not gone unnoticed in the streets, which now have been spattered with blood. The stain is on Suharto’s hands.