Government leaders pay tribute to Indonesia's former dictator Suharto

Suharto’s funeral, with full military honours, took place on Monday in the central Javan city of Solo. While he was forced to step down in 1998, the regime that Suharto established remains largely intact, despite its more recent democratic trappings. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, himself a Suharto-era general, presided over the lavish ceremony, hailing the dead dictator as “a loyal fighter, a true soldier and a respected statesman”.

While no prominent US official attended, a White House spokesman announced that President Bush had sent “his condolences to the people of Indonesia on the loss of their former president”. Two of South East Asia’s longstanding autocrats—former Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Singapore’s elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew—flew to Indonesia to pay their last respects to the military strongman.

Such was the scale of Suharto’s crimes that the media could not completely ignore the brutality and corruption of his regime. But the coverage has been at pains to emphasise his “positive contribution” and urge a “balanced approach” to his legacy. A comment in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, hailed Suharto for transforming Indonesia from “an economic basket case and a trouble maker in the region” under previous President Sukarno into one of Asia’s tiger economies. “For all his flaws, Suharto deserves to be remembered as one of Asia’s greatest leaders,” it declared.

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