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Jakarta in grip of coup rumours

Source
The Nation - December 18, 1997

Andreas Harsono, Jakarta – As the Indonesian government ventures to overcome the current monetary crisis, rumours have started to circulate widely of an impending military coup in connection with the health of Indonesia's strong man, President Suharto.

Businessman Hashim Djojohadikusumo broke open the issue last Monday when he denied the existence of an impending coup, saying that his brother, Maj Gen Prabowo Subianto, the commander of the Kopassus elite command and the son-in-law of President Suharto, was in London.

"If there is a [serious] problem inside this country, he must be here. But he is in London. It shows that he is confident about our national security," said Hashim.

Rumours about a coup began to circulate in Jakarta last week and gained momentum when Singapore's Straits Times reported last Sunday that there was widespread speculation that an impending military action would take place.

But the Singaporean newspaper did not provide details of the rumour. It merely quoted Maj Gen Zakie Anwar Makarim, the chief intelligence officer of the Indonesian Armed Forces (Abri), lashing out at "groups with leftist leanings" for spreading such rumours.

"These are lies. They want to destabilise the economy and cause a crisis," Makarim said, who is a close associate of Prabowo.

"All this talk of a planned coup is nonsense because Abri is united in its support for the president. I can vouch for that, because as head of military intelligence, I know what's going on," he said.

Rumours of a coup apparently surfaced after the army had conducted two different military training exercises last week while government spokesmen announced that President Suharto had cancelled a planned trip to attend an Asean summit in Kuala Lumpur due to health problems.

The announcement apparently helped fuel rumours that different factions within the military were anticipating more serious health problems which might lead to a power struggle for the No 1 position.

Suharto's decision not to send Vice President Try Sutrisno, a former army chief, as his replacement to the Kuala Lumpur meeting had also generated uncertainty about Indonesia's leadership succession.

Diplomats and political observers here also believed that Singaporean diplomats in Jakarta were the best sources concerning sensitive information.

Straits Times correspondent Susan Sim, however, denied that her colleague, Derwin Pereira, had received any rumours from the Singapore Embassy. Sim said that her assistant simply wrote about the rumours which were already widely circulated here.

An Internet-based underground news service, Siar, reported yesterday that military preparations were apparently being made to anticipate public protests and to protect President Suharto if the ongoing economic crisis turned violent.

The first training exercise took place on Dec 9 in the Tegal Gundil area in Bogor, around 80 kilometres south of Jakarta, involving thousands of military personnel in an anti-riot exercise, which created heavy traffic jams as most Bogor streets were closed.

The second exercise was held on Dec12 in the Kemayoran area in Jakarta. It involved 7,000 police and army personnel as well as helicopters and other military vehicles. Jakarta Police Chief Maj Gen Hamami Nata and Jakarta military commander Maj Gen Syafri Syamsudin personally oversaw the exercise.

Indonesia's foreign debt of about US$110 billion is now larger than its gross domestic product this year, which used to be valued at about $230 billion before the currency crisis.

The cost of servicing cost the debt has risen from around five per cent of total output to 10 per cent, imposing a massive new burden on the economy next year. But that pales beside the estimated foreign exchange loss on unhedged private sector foreign debt, which is now more than 30 per cent of GDP.

Analysts said the economic problem could seriously undermine Suharto's hold on the country, because he has anchored his 30 years in power on consistent economic development, which has seen average economic growth of around six per cent, although it has been closer to eight per cent in recent years.

The underground news service, a common phenomenon here where the free flow of information is frequently restricted, reported that Bogor and Kemayoran were where left-leaning army officers made their preparations to conduct a failed coup attempt in 1965.

The coup attempt, however, cornered President Sukarno, resulting in Suharto, then a major general, taking over power and replacing Sukarno.

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