Uli Schmetzer, Jakarta – Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra loved fast cars and fast women, and at the peak of his playboy days he bought his own racetrack and a stake in Italian automaker Lamborghini.
He once showed up at a news conference in a royal blue Rolls- Royce to answer questions about why his Indonesian-made Timor, touted as the country's first family car, had been relegated to the dustbin of failed Indonesian ventures.
As the favorite son of ousted dictator Suharto, he has not lost the arrogance of the spoiled rich brat who believes he is untouchable and that his father's larger-than-life shadow will protect him.
With the same fixed smile that made his ruthless father famous, he scoffs today at efforts of the new democratic Indonesia to put him behind bars after his conviction on charges of defrauding Indonesia of $11 million. He quips: "It's a political case. Go and talk to the prosecutor."
In October the attorney general's office announced that Tommy was blocked for 12 months from leaving the country, the first time a member of the once omnipotent Suharto clan has been barred from traveling abroad.
All subsequent efforts to take Suharto's son to jail to serve an 18-month sentence have failed in a country where clandestine forces in the military and police remain quietly loyal to the old dictator and are blamed for stirring up the religious and ethnic violence that now rages across the country.
In monetary terms, the charges are mere drops in the ocean for a Suharto family fortune estimated at $14 billion. In legal terms, the family's best defense remains the rotation of judges, generals, prosecutors, governors and officials in a game of musical chairs that has made this nation of 214 million people nearly ungovernable and prevented the government from recovering even a single dollar of the Suharto wealth.
Suharto's old cronies are afraid Tommy's imprisonment could open a Pandora's box of prosecutions of their own dubious pasts. President Abdurrahman Wahid, who enjoys limited political and military support, has talked much about prosecuting the Suhartos but has managed to do little.
Tommy's lawyer, Nudirman Munir, one of a battery of 12 legal advisers, denies his client has any intention of leaving the country. "What we need is to buy time," he told the Tribune. "Over the next weeks the judges at the Supreme Court will be changed, especially the chief justice. Then we can clarify Tommy's case."
Nudirman speculates new judges will rule favorably on an appeal to keep the youngest Suharto son from the jail term imposed by the Supreme Court after a lower court dismissed the fraud charge.
The national logistics agency, known as BULOG, had given Tommy a block of prime property in exchange for a worthless piece of mud. His Humpuss conglomerate built a shopping mall on the acquired land.
In November, Tommy took the ultimate recourse and asked for a presidential pardon. It was denied.
Other judges might also reconfirm a dubious court ruling that Suharto – Tommy's ailing, 79-year-old father – is physically and mentally unable to face charges he used nearly $600 million in charity funds as handouts to cronies and political allies.
The choice of a judge in a corrupt judiciary is so tricky that Wahid admitted that in order to handle the Suharto case "we will have to find a judge who is clean, honest and brave and who is not afraid of anyone."
His statement could have been borrowed from the popular Javanese shadow-puppet plays encompassing a trove of intrigues reflected in the country's politics. Whether Tommy goes to jail or remains free could make or break the lingering power of the Suharto clan and determine the future of Wahid, and even Indonesia.
The Suharto family is fighting back. Political analysts say the family continues to enjoy the tacit support of large sectors of the police and military, whose shadowy special units were once employed to liquidate opponents of the regime.
The formidable power of a family running its multinational business empire like a state within a state is held responsible for many difficulties in a nation that has switched to democracy after 32 years of dictatorship.
With Suharto debilitated, allegedly by three strokes, the family's economic affairs are run by daughter Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana, 51, the oldest of his six children, heralded once as the dictator's successor. State prosecutors say the clan's "defense portfolio" is in the hands of Tommy, 37, who gave up his race cars to become the family's buccaneer.
Wahid – a blind and ailing Muslim cleric – holds only a tiny minority in parliament. Real power remains in the hands of the Golkar Party, formerly the democratic facade of the Suharto regime.
Wahid must pacify members of other political parties by appointing them to important posts in order to maintain his strained multiparty coalition. He also needs financial support from abroad because coffers at home are empty. Worse, he has to placate public opinion but do little to annoy the elite.
In today's Indonesia, Suharto cronies scheme to hang on to pockets of power. Even reformers, flying the flag of democracy, try to carve out their share of the spoils. The military, once the brutal whip that kept Suharto in power and the archipelago united, has split into factions. Rogue units, maverick soldiers and secret services within secret services stoke regional and religious conflicts, infiltrate democratic organizations, and create a sense of uncertainty and frustration. Ordinary people already grumble: "Life was better under Suharto."
As old and new interests neutralized each other, Muslim fundamentalists, separatists and rogue army units have enflamed simmering regional conflicts in Timor, Aceh, the Moluccas and Irian Jaya. Christian churches were bombed in recent days.
In less than three years Indonesia has become like a slab of glass with a spider web of cracks. A few more taps and the glass could shatter.
"The system is procrastinating and we feel the inertia can only be solved by revolution and not by mere talk of reforms. We ousted Suharto by peaceful demonstrations but we might have to become more violent and more radical.
We might have to learn how to make Molotov cocktails and how to use guns," said Yervis, the chairman of Jarkot, the left-wing umbrella organization of the Indonesian student movements.
Indonesia's student movement has remained on the streets for three years. It brought down a dictator and his anointed successor and maintains an almost daily street level pressure to try Suharto and jail his son.
"Our first priority is to drag Suharto into court, but not one of these corrupt courts here, but a Peoples' Court, similar to the one that ended Romania's dictatorship," Yervis added. "If the Peoples' Court decides to hang Suharto in front of City Hall then that must be done."
But even students are now split into factions. Some have taken money to demonstrate in favor of the former dictator. Two pro- Suharto student demonstrators were beaten to death.
"You are poor and prices go up. Then someone gives you 50,000 rupiahs [$6] a day to hold up a poster saying 'Save Suharto' or 'Suharto is the father of development.' What do you do? I am not interested in politics. All I want is my degree, and 50,000 rupiahs will buy me a week of food and bus fares. So I hold up the poster," said a university student who refused to give his name.
Student leaders allege the money for these pro-Suharto demonstrations comes out of the Suharto family fortune and is controlled by Tommy. He allegedly channels the funds to professional organizers who are willing to raise a mob on any issue and in anyone's favor – in return for hard cash.
Eddy Siswoyo's downtown office has no telephone, no company sign and no license. But from its small space he has organized more than 100 demonstrations, capitalizing on the growing reservoir of the poor and unemployed willing to take to the streets on any issue for the free soft drinks, cigarettes and the $2 daily allowance he pays.
"There are dozens who do this kind of work. You can have any number of people in the streets depending on how much you are willing to pay," the rent-a-crowd entrepreneur said.
"Uncle Eddy" began his career as an activist in the anti-Suharto demonstrations that forced the dictator to step down. Now he is making a living earning his 10 percent cut from what he calls "allowing people to express their democratic rights."
Poverty, instability, terror and the durable old boys' network operates in favor of the Suharto clan.
In September, Wahid ordered Tommy's arrest in the bombing of the Jakarta Stock Exchange that killed 23 people on the day his father was supposed to, but did not, appear in court.
Within an hour Tommy was released by national Police Chief Gen. Rusdihardjo, who once was Suharto's aide. Wahid then fired the police chief.
"Tommy is not worried. He believes in God and says there is nothing to lose," said his lawyer, Nudirman.