Jakarta, IO – Two days ago, we passed a milestone. 57 years ago, Indonesia witnessed a very important change of the country’s leadership, from former President Soekarno who had been in office since the Proclamation of our Independence on August 17, 1945, to a new leader, General Soeharto, Commander of the Armed Forces of the Republic in charge of security and defense, and thus who was anointed by a decree issued on March 11 by President Soekarno, to be the new President and the Supreme Commander.
President Soeharto, true to his character as a decisive General, immediately launched an operation to clean up the military and the bureaucracy from Communist infiltration, banning the Indonesian Communist Party, which had extended its political tentacles throughout the nation. It only took Soeharto a short time to right the situation, returning it slowly to normal. In the meantime, much abuse and many killings of Communists were carried out by different groups; reports circulated indicating it was difficult to control feelings of revenge and hatred.
Step by step, President Soeharto tirelessly worked to restore order in society, also swiftly dealing with the bewildering economic problems the choking the country, from rampant inflation to brutal stagnation.
The new President called in a team of Economic Advisors, comprised of Economists from the Faculty of Economics, the University of Indonesia and others, including Social Scientists, while appointing them to Economic posts in his Cabinet. Later, with a degree of cynicism, came to be known as “The Berkeley Mafia” a title bestowed by journalist David Ransom, who wrote an op-ed about them in the left-leaning “Ramparts” magazine, in October 1970; many had in fact graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. This group included Professors Widjojo Nisisastro, Ali Wardhana, Sarbini Sumawinata, Selo Sumardjan, Max Makagiansar, Emil Salim and Sumarlin. The description was not totally accurate. In the group also their former Professor, the Dean of the Economics Faculty at UI, Professor Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, as well as Radius Prawiro and Frans Seda, who all had been educated in the Netherlands, at the University of Rotterdam, The Erasmus University. A few were Harvard and Cornell University graduates as well.
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All right, never mind about the errors in details. This team had been working so well, first in dealing with a rampant hyperinflation of 635 per cent in 1966; following a major clampdown, this was suppressed to 65 per cent, just a year later, and did not leave single digits after two further years. The Team also dealt with a mountain of foreign debts, head on, by hiring well-known German banker Herman Abs, who forcefully restructured Government debt.
I happened to know them all, via working for them and later with them in the Planning Office, as well as in the Cabinet. And I had learned so much about the arts of becoming an action intellectual and patriot from them, learning the tricks of the actual work and working with others – very important in any development efforts. One thing is clear to me though: the technocrats were not buying the ‘neo-lib’ philosophy of free fight liberalism and laissez faire economic philosophy. Prof Widjojo was majoring in population study and early-on studied the philosophy of Malthus: he designed a family planning program and transmigration, believing in kampung improvement projects and providing subsidies to those in need. Prof Ali Wardhana studied structural tension in society, as suffered by many Latin American countries during and after his study in Berkeley. And so are the others. I majored in Monetary Economics and read so much of the work of Milton Friedman, but as someone originated from and grew up in an extended family system, I learned early that we must help each other to progress.
There was such a tsunami of criticism about the thirty-two year Soeharto Presidency, which was indeed flawed by nepotism, corruption and whatnot. However, nobody could criticize his contribution to maintaining stability, superb performance in the economy, increasing the level of literacy, gaining respect for Indonesia throughout the region, as is our due; he was, after all, the leader of the biggest country in ASEAN. These are my stories about President Soeharto’s leadership, which started with the issuance of the March 11 Decree by President Soekarno, and catapulted him to a record to be reckoned with, by both supporters and critics.