The death of the former Indonesian president Suharto at the age of 86 reminds us that even the most stubborn of dictatorships come to an end. Despite predictions by his ruling clique that he would lead Indonesia into the 21st century, his term of office, which began with bloodshed in 1967, ended equally bloodily in 1998. Although known as the "smiling general", he had a complex character which, for most of his life, successfully deflected analysis. He was acclaimed as a man of modest origins who had taken power out of disgust at the corruption of the last years of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, who ruled from its independence from the Netherlands in 1949 until 1967.
For years, this myth coexisted with the public knowledge that Suharto presided over a regime in which his closest friends controlled huge monopolies and lucrative concessions, while his children acquired assets worth billions of dollars.
Under his rule, Indonesia became closely aligned with western interests during the cold war and was rewarded with aid and investment to foster rapid economic growth, making fortunes for his cronies. He favoured ambitious, but often unsound, development projects, and schemes to relocate millions of landless peasants and open up virgin forests paved the way for the country's current environmental crisis.
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