Despite his many failings, Australia has reason to be thankful for the steadying hand former Indonesian president Suharto brought to the world's most populous Muslim nation, immediately to our north. That he was able to create even a semblance of national unity in what was, when he took office, an economically ravaged collection of disparate islands is in many ways miraculous. Although justifiably criticised for the brutality of many of his actions and the family corruption that flourished, particularly in his later years in office, Suharto was above all a product of the region and the times.
It is fitting that, in his dying days, Suharto was visited by his contemporary Asian hard men, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. President Suharto can be rightfully regarded as the man who rescued Indonesia from despair, turned back the tide of communism and put his country on the uncertain road to democracy. As The Australian's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, has written, Suharto was an authentic giant of Southeast Asian history and a big figure even in global terms.
There is, of course, much to be said against Suharto. Over three decades of his New Order regime, he utilised the military to impose a central government over an unlikely nation. Millions of people were killed in brutal crackdowns on communists and Chinese Indonesians. A transmigration policy, through which millions of people have been resettled from overcrowded Java to less populated, mineral-rich regions, including West Papua, caused great upheaval and suffering.
There were widespread human rights abuses, especially but not only in East Timor, Aceh and West Papua, and pervasive corruption, which extended throughout his government and was most evident in the extravagance of his own family.
After losing power after 32 years, Suharto was accused by graft watchdog Transparency International in 2004 of embezzling up to $US35 billion while he was in office. The Suharto regime had a terrible record of environmental management, and to his country's enduring detriment, Suharto showed a misguided determination to prevent the development of the autonomous institutions needed to manage the increasingly complex society Indonesia became as it grew in prosperity. These institutions included an independent judiciary, a free press and representative political bodies. In fact, Suharto worked to undermine and prevent the evolution of the judiciary, the media and the parliament. When financial crisis struck Asia in 1997, followed by political crisis in 1998, Indonesian institutions were too fragile to cope, ultimately costing Suharto the presidency.
For all his failings, Suharto had many significant achievements. As Australia's former ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woollcott has written, strident criticism, especially from the political Left, of Suharto as a brutal, corrupt military dictator ruling an expansionist Indonesia has always been exaggerated. Mr Woolcott contends Suharto was certainly authoritarian and relied on the armed forces for support, but he was also pragmatic, secular and opposed to Islamic extremism.
When Suharto took control of Indonesia in 1965, the country was in crisis, unable to feed itself and with inflation running at 500 per cent. Under Suharto's predecessor, president Sukarno, many in the country were starving, there was great political instability and great regional tensions. Indonesia was embroiled in a dangerous military confrontation with Malaysia, which saw Indonesian and Australian troops clash in Borneo.
Suharto rose to power after defeating a botched pro-communist coup attempt against Sukarno. He was assigned emergency powers on March 11, 1966 through a presidential decree by Sukarno before becoming president the following year. Once in office, he set about turning the country's fortunes around while consolidating his own power and that of the New Order regime he had set up. As Sheridan has written, it is difficult to imagine what Australia might have been like had Indonesia become a communist nation in the mid-1960s. Everything we know of Southeast Asian development and success would have been absent from history, replaced by tyranny and social failure on a massive scale.
Suharto saved his nation from devastation, imposing a semblance of order on what Mr Woolcott has described as a chain of 13,600 islands, stretching the distance from Broome in Western Australia to Christchurch in New Zealand, with a population of about 230 million people composed of about 300 ethnic groups and speaking about 250 distinct languages. Creating a sense of nation in such circumstances is in itself an extraordinary achievement.
Despite the corruption claims against him, the esteem with which Suharto continued to be held up until his death was demonstrated by the blanket coverage given in newspapers and on television networks to Suharto's failing health since he was first hospitalised on January 4.
As with all leaders, Suharto's legacy must be viewed in the context in which he had to govern. A former Dutch colony, Indonesia is still a very young country. Under Suharto's watch, it fared much better in making the transition to democracy than many former colonies, particularly in Africa.
Alongside Indonesia's social upheaval during the Suharto years was great economic progress. When he took power, per capita income was $US74 and 70 per cent of Indonesia's population lived below the UN poverty line. About half of all primary school-age children went to school. At the end of Suharto's presidency, the number of people below the poverty line had been reduced to 14 per cent, per capita income was almost $US1000, creating a large middle class, and 96 per cent of primary school-aged children were in school.
While critics claim Suharto was the lucky beneficiary of the natural prosperity of the period, there are plenty of examples of governments unable to capitalise on regional economic good fortune of the time. Suharto's economic reforms, which became a textbook study for defeating inflation, were achieved with the aid of well-educated external advisers, who became known as the Berkeley Mafia.
Suharto recognised that an important key to stability was to maintain religious tolerance. This alone was of tremendous strategic benefit for Australia. As such, religious tolerance is a central plank of Suharto's regional peace dividend. Just as far from being expansionist, as some critics claim, the main thrust of Suharto's foreign policy after 1966 was to regain the confidence of the West and of Indonesia's neighbours, especially Singapore and Malaysia, following Sukarno's erratic anti-Western policy and his Konfrontasi against Malaysia.
Under Suharto, modern Indonesia got to where it is today, a peaceful, religiously moderate, democratic nation. In the process, Australia's relationship with Indonesia has matured from one of great suspicion to close ties. Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating believed the Suharto regime represented "the single most beneficial strategic development to have affected Australia and its region in the past 30 years".
According to Mr Woolcott, the close personal relations developed by Mr Keating, and by Gough Whitlam in the 1970s, helped greatly to alleviate tensions over East Timor and led to close co-operation over APEC. The bond between Australia and Indonesia were strengthened greatly under the Howard government, despite tensions over the granting of autonomy to East Timor. Australia continues to give great support to help improve Indonesia's infrastructure and develop the institutions necessary for a fully functioning democracy.
Against the terrible political situation that exists through much of the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia provides great cause for optimism.
The Asian financial crises not only cost Suharto his presidency but also knocked Indonesia off its tremendous growth path. The country has yet to recapture the dynamic growth now being experienced by China and India. But it is logical that Indonesia will eventually be carried along in China and India's wake. The demands of growth, such as the desire for nuclear power stations, will naturally cause tensions between Australia and Indonesia. But the greater contact and trust that has been built between the two nations, something that was largely unthinkable in 1965, is one of the great legacies of Suharto's rule.