Order for Arrest of a Suharto Scion Heightens Power Play in Indonesia

The high-stakes power struggle between Indonesia’s present and past regimes intensified Friday with President Abdurrahman Wahid’s announcement that he had ordered the arrest of a former dictator’s son in connection with a terrorist bombing.

While conceding that the evidence was incomplete, Wahid said he had called for the arrest of Hutomo “Tommy” Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former President Suharto, to prevent further explosions like the car bombing Wednesday at the Jakarta Stock Exchange. The attack, which killed 15 people and forced the closure of the exchange, followed other unsolved bombings.

“The government has decided to take drastic steps against those behind [the attacks] and prevent similar incidents happening in the future,” said Wahid, who added that he had issued the arrest order during a Cabinet meeting Thursday.

The nature of the evidence against Hutomo, who is commonly called Tommy Suharto, was unclear, and police gave mixed signals about whether he would be arrested based on the president’s decree. One official said police needed more evidence before they could detain him; another said he would be apprehended today.

Hours later, Tommy Suharto appeared at police headquarters voluntarily and was being questioned, but it remained unclear whether he would be arrested.

Wahid, who has been in office since last October, is struggling to keep control of the country in the face of a string of violent incidents.

Attempting to break with Indonesia’s autocratic past, his government is prosecuting Suharto on corruption charges. But both times the 79-year-old former military ruler was due in court, bombs have gone off in Jakarta, the capital.

While Wahid was in New York attending the U.N. Millennium Summit last week, three U.N. aid workers were killed by a mob in West Timor province. The president charged that the slayings were timed to “humiliate” him.

Speculation has been rife among Indonesians that the series of killings and bombings has been instigated by Suharto supporters and the military in an attempt to undermine Indonesia’s fragile democracy and return the former dictator to power.

The president said intelligence reports indicated that his opponents were planning further terrorist attacks.

“According to a telephone tap, there are several other places that will be bombed, and I have told the authorities to take strict action and make security checks to prevent this from happening again,” Wahid said. “We cannot tolerate this anymore.”

Suharto, a former five-star general, came to power in 1966 with the ruthless slaughter of his opponents. An estimated 500,000 people, many of them Communists, were slain. Later, his rule was marked by bouts of bloody repression that are estimated to have left hundreds of thousands more dead. He was forced to resign in 1998 after the economy collapsed and mass protests escalated.

While Suharto was president, his six children--and many of his friends--grew wealthy and came to symbolize the excesses of his rule. Tommy Suharto, 38, became notorious for his plan to build and market a national line of automobiles, the Timor, which soaked up vast sums in tax breaks before going belly up. He also established a controversial but lucrative monopoly over the clove trade.

Tommy Suharto was acquitted in 1999 after a trial on graft charges tied to a land deal. In July, shortly after he was questioned by federal prosecutors in another case, a bomb went off at the attorney general’s headquarters.

The elder Suharto has been charged with skimming at least $571 million from charities under his control. His lawyers say he has suffered three strokes and is too ill to stand trial. He has not shown up for either of his two trial dates.

Despite testimony Thursday from his doctors about his poor health, the chief judge in the case ordered the former president to appear in court Sept. 28.

On the night before Suharto’s trial was to begin, a small bomb blew out the windows of an empty bus parked near his temporary courtroom. The bombing of the stock exchange Wednesday came one day before his trial was to resume.

The former president’s attorneys say he is innocent of the corruption charges and had nothing to do with the bombings.

Police say the military-style plastic explosives used in the stock exchange attack were similar to those involved in another bombing, on Aug. 1 outside the home of Philippine Ambassador Leonides Caday. That explosion killed two people and injured at least 22 others, including the ambassador.

On Friday, Wahid visited Caday in the hospital where he is still recovering from injuries.

“Our patience is limited,” the president told reporters afterward. “This is the time for us to take stern action.”

Wahid took office after the country’s first democratic selection of a president in decades. A respected Muslim cleric who has suffered from strokes and is legally blind, he has become known for his habit of making confusing remarks that must later be clarified or corrected.

Wahid told reporters that he had also ordered the arrest of Habib Alwi al Baagil, chairman of the pro-Suharto Islamic Defense Front, in a similar preventive measure.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is guilty,” the president said.