In Remembrance of Soeharto

Haji Muhammad Soeharto died at June 27^th 2008 at the age of 86 (he was born on June 8, 1921). Soeharto was a controversial man. Some people hate him while others praise him.

Yes Soeharto as a human has mistakes. Though some of his mistakes could be big corruptions at least done by his cronies that left his brothers and family billion of dollars.

Some says Soeharto kill hundreds of thousands people. But we have to know that Soeharto could not have done the killing by himself. He got a lot of support from the majority of Indonesians. Most of his victims are from Indonesia Communist party (PKI) that rebel several times in 1948 and also in 1965. PKI list all of people that have to be killed including my father. In some study people also say that PKI make a black list people that they will kill. It is not different from the killing field done by Communist Party in Campuchea. At least 7 generals such as Ahmad Yani killed by PKI.

Every action will get reaction. So the killing by PKI gets bigger resistance that killed the PKI and prisons many of them.

Excerpt from yahoo.com: Mariani, a 53-year-old woman, said she had walked two hours to be there. “I think Pak Harto thought of the people,” she told AFP, using a respectful appellation. “Everything was cheap, now things are expensive.”

Now price could be doubled or more just in a few weeks. For example soybean from 0.3 USD/kg becomes 0.8 USD/kg while cooking oil hikes from 0.6 USD/kg to 1.1 USD/kg. The rocketing price for foods almost never happens in Soeharto era.

In Soeharto era, with USD 20 people could send their children to respectable National University. Now it’s only a dream for poor people. They have to get USD 7,500 to enter the same university.

Now many people get in a very long line with jerrycan to get kerosene with price 0.5 USD/liter. In Soeharto era, people could get kerosene easily with price 0.05 USD/liter.

Soeharto also give hundreds of thousands farmers 2 hectares of land so they could have land to farm in Transmigration Project. Indonesia managed to self sufficient for food in his era. Now the Transmigration Project nearly dead.

Though some people say that’s because Soeharto make a great debt (around USD 70 billion), but people don’t care much about that.