Dictator's son decides to test democracy in Indonesia

Democracy has not been terribly good to Hutomo Mandala Putra, the youngest son of Indonesia’s late dictator, Suharto. But it has not been too bad, either.

On the one hand, Tommy, as he is universally known, has been to jail—he was sentenced to 15 years in 2002 for arranging the murder of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him on corruption charges (the corruption conviction was later overturned on appeal).

But on the other hand, he was out after four years following a five-year sentence reduction by the same court and a series of remissions.

In business, too, Tommy no longer has the same clout as during his father’s rule, when he and his siblings were the most glaring face of the family’s alleged amassing of tens of billions of dollars through corrupt deals and sewn-up monopolies. But he is still a very wealthy man, involved in businesses ranging from property development to the media.

Now, 13 years after a popular uprising brought down his father’s authoritarian New Order regime, Tommy is eyeing a return to prominence this time, in democratic politics.

While staying publicly coy, Tommy has become chairman of the board of a nascent political party, National Republic, that plans to contest national elections in this country of nearly 240 million people in 2014. Its rallying cry: disaffection with democracy and the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and longing for the predictability and steady economic growth of his father’s three-decade, military-led rule.

“The people don’t believe in the government,” said Yus Usman Sumanegara, a businessman who is one of the founders of National Republic. “Thirteen years of ‘reform’ hasn’t made people’s lives better,” he said, referring to the introduction of democratic changes since Suharto’s resignation in 1998. “We’re just running in place.”

The party did not want to turn the clock back to authoritarianism, Yus said, but simply to return to what he called “Indonesia’s glory” —the era of stability and rising prosperity presided over by Suharto, before it was all undone by the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

“We don’t want to be grandiose about it,” Yus said, while outlining the new party’s goals.

“How do we fill the bellies of the people? How do we get kids to school? How do we ensure people’s health?”

There are plenty of indications that Indonesians are fed up with the politics of today. High-profile corruption scandals are a staple of daily news, and there is a widespread perception – despite annual economic growth of more than 6 per cent and rising incomes—that life is not getting better.

A survey released in May by the private polling company Indo Barometer set off nationwide debate when it showed that Yudhoyono’s satisfaction rating had dipped below 50 per cent, to 48.9 per cent, for the first time since his 2009 election to a second five-year term. When asked who was Indonesia’s most liked president, 36.5 per cent of respondents chose  Suharto, whose administration was also ranked as the most successful by 40.5 per cent. Yudhoyono took second place with just more than a fifth of the vote on both counts. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

All this appears to have made an impression on Tommy. Although he has not made clear exactly what his intentions are—for example, with regard to a presidential bid in 2014—he has fanned speculation in public, reportedly telling reporters recently: “Thank God, the public is finally becoming aware of how things are now. We have to fix things so they’ll be even better than in the New Order.”

Repeated requests to interview Tommy were declined through Yus, who said he would not grant interviews to the news media before National Republic received its final certification as a political party from the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry, which is expected later this year.

Old elite
Indonesia is no stranger to comebacks from the old regime. The advent of democracy has not meant the end of the old elite, and former Suharto loyalists have dispersed with ease throughout government, political parties and business. A dark past is also not necessarily a problem.

Wiranto, a senior general under Suharto, ran as a presidential candidate against  Yudhoyono in 2004—and again as a vice-presidential candidate in 2009 despite being indicted by a UN-backed tribunal in East Timor on charges of crimes against humanity over violence surrounding the country’s 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia.

An arrest warrant for Wiranto remains in effect, but the Timorese authorities never forwarded it to Interpol. Prabowo Subianto, another former general who has freely admitted to being involved in the military abduction of pro-democracy activists in the dying days of the Suharto regime, ran for vice president on another ticket against Yudhoyono in 2009.  Prabowo, who was once married to a daughter of Suharto, is widely seen as a serious and well-financed presidential contender in 2014.

But even by Indonesian standards, Tommy is damaged goods, said Muhammad Qodari, the director of Indo Barometer. Indonesians indeed feel let down by a corrupt and grasping political class, Qodari said, and they are frustrated with a perceived lack of firm leadership by  Yudhoyono. But they have no real desire to turn back the clock to the repression of the Suharto era, he said.

In a country where a tilt at politics requires a hefty amount of money, National Republic has appeared so far to be a low-budget affair. More likely, he said, was that Tommy might be putting his hat in the ring as part of an effort to rehabilitate his image. Tommy certainly appears concerned with protecting his reputation.

He recently caused an uproar by successfully suing the national airline, Garuda, for 12.5 billion rupiah, or $1.45 million, for damages over an in-flight magazine article about one of his developments, a resort on Bali, which referred to his status as a “convicted murderer.”
Whether Tommy’s comeback takes hold, or flares out as a short-lived sideshow, will be a sign of how disillusioned the public is with democracy, and how much Indonesians have forgotten of the excesses of the past.

But Budiman Sudjatmiko, a member of the Indonesian House of Representatives who was jailed as a political prisoner during the New Order, said the fact that Tommy was even considered a potential candidate showed that far too few people had faced justice over the widespread corruption and rights abuses of his father’s rule.

“That Tommy is able and willing to run, that’s a product of democracy,” he said. “But if Tommy gets significant votes—if he runs for the presidency—you can say that’s a product of the culture of impunity.”

Even many former New Order loyalists who continue to see the elder Suharto as a heroic figure dismiss his son as someone who parlayed his father’s good work into personal wealth and a playboy lifestyle.

“Comparing Suharto and Tommy is like comparing the earth and the sky,” said Sutiyoso, a retired general and Suharto’s last appointed governor of Jakarta. Sutiyoso said the son was probably being pressured to run by businesspeople eager for access to parliamentary politics’ lucrative system of patronage. “'Our people aren’t stupid enough to vote for just anyone,” he said.