New Leader’s Rule May Be Matter of Weeks or Months

Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie is only the third president this nation has had since gaining independence from the Dutch 53 years ago and is the first to ascend from the vice presidency in a peaceful transfer of power.

His predecessors, Sukarno and Suharto, held power for about 20 and 32 years, respectively.

Habibie--a political creation of Suharto’s--may have a much shorter run, perhaps only a matter of weeks or months, some political analysts say.

Considered a boogeyman by the business community and disliked by the military, Habibie, most analysts believe, is likely to be only a caretaker president who will step, or be eased, aside, probably through negotiations, to clear the way for a government with new faces at the top.

“If we have only swapped Suharto for Habibie, nothing has changed,” political commentator Wimar Witoelar said. “Anyone with the slightest political sense understands that is not acceptable.”

Regardless how long he serves, Habibie, 61, on Thursday found himself the president of the world’s fourth most populous country but a leader without any real power base, except those provided by links to the former president.

Though Suharto chose him as his vice president, Suharto never meant to anoint him as his heir apparent, Indonesian political scientists said.

Habibie’s friendship with Suharto goes back 46 years and is so close that Habibie would burst unannounced into Suharto’s office and stay for hours, throwing the presidential schedule into disarray.

In private, Habibie often referred to Suharto as “SGS”--Super Genius Suharto.

A devout Muslim, Habibie was born June 25, 1936, on the island of Sulawesi, the fourth of eight children. He started reading the Koran, Islam’s holy book, as a child, and as an adult continues to fast every Monday and Thursday in religious observance.

He went on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1983.

Habibie--or “Rudy,” as friends call him--was educated in the 1950s in West Germany, where he studied engineering and aircraft construction. An intelligent, eager student, he was the only non-German in the post-World War II era at his university to write about aeronautics for his thesis.

After holding important positions with Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm GmbH, the West German aircraft maker, Habibie returned home, looking for a strategy to propel Indonesia into the age of technology.

He established an aircraft company to build commuter jets, and, in 1976, was appointed by Suharto to the Cabinet as minister of research and technology. He was known as a hard worker with a photographic memory. He also was one of the Suharto cronies who benefited from his relationship with the president.

Habibie’s business interests include arms manufacturing, shipyards and aircraft maintenance. But his penchant for expensive, flashy projects often put him in conflict in the business community, and his habit of meddling often nettled the military, in which he never served.

His most famous blunder came in the early 1990s, when, without consulting the military, he bought 39 decrepit East German warships for what he thought was the bargain price of about $468 million. The vessels turned out to be inappropriate for Indonesia’s tropical navy and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to refit.

He also has never lived down the “zigzag” theory he articulated last year, asserting that high interest rates lead to inflation--the exact opposite of conventional wisdom.

When rumors began circulating in January that Suharto was considering him for the largely ceremonial post of vice president, the rupiah, the local currency, plunged to 17,000 to the dollar--its lowest value ever. (It had been at 2,400 six months earlier.)

Although Indonesia’s vice president is traditionally a military man, Suharto went ahead and put him on the ticket. They were “elected” in March, running unopposed.

Economists say Habibie will have his work cut out for him. His reputation as a big spender may make it difficult to entice investors to return to Indonesia, whose economy is already crippled, and it may take some time before the International Monetary Fund feels comfortable with him. The IMF has put together a $43-billion bailout package for Indonesia.

The Indonesian Constitution, written in 1945, says that, in the event of the president’s inability to serve, leadership passes to the vice president. That happened with Suharto’s resignation after three months of student demonstrations.

But Indonesian political sources said Suharto never intended Habibie to be the eventual president.

Already beleaguered by election time, Suharto was merely looking for a trusted friend to take the No. 2 position and wasn’t much interested in the public’s or international community’s reaction to his choice.