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The coup
In the early hours of Oct. 1, 1965, a group of army conspirators calling itself the September 30th Movement kidnapped and murdered six army generals. A seventh, Nasution, escaped. The following morning the movement announced that it had seized power to forestall a coup against the president by a council of generals. In the meantime, General Suharto, commander of the army’s strategic reserve, began to gather the reins of power into his own hands. By evening he had seized the initiative from the conspirators.
The PKI maintained that the coup attempt was an internal affair of the army. The army leadership, on the contrary, insisted that it was part of a PKI plot to seize power and subsequently embarked on a mission to purge the country of the perceived communist threat. In the following month the military slaughtered communists and alleged communists across Java and in Bali, with estimates of the number of people killed ranging from 80,000 to more than 1,000,000. In the following years communists, alleged communists, and their families were frequently denied basic rights (e.g., right to a fair trial, right to equal opportunity in employment, and freedom from discrimination). Between 1969 and 1980, approximately 10,000 persons, primarily known or purported communists, were detained without trial on Buru Island in the Moluccas.
With the destruction of the PKI, one of the elements of balance that had supported the Sukarno regime was eliminated, and the president himself came under increasing pressure. In March 1966, against a background of student action, the army forced Sukarno to delegate extensive powers to Suharto, now chief of staff of the army. With his new authority, Suharto banned the PKI and moved gradually to consolidate his position as the effective head of government. In March 1967 the MPR installed Suharto as acting president, and in March 1968 he was appointed to the presidency in his own right. Sukarno was kept under house arrest until his death on June 21, 1970.
Suharto’s New Order
Suharto immediately began to reverse many of Sukarno’s policies. The confrontation with Malaysia was quickly ended, and Indonesia rejoined the UN. In addition, Indonesia was a major participant in the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967. Domestically, the support of the army enabled Suharto to achieve a political stability that had been lacking under Sukarno. But the major policies initiated by the new regime, which Suharto designated as the New Order, had to do with economic rehabilitation. Successful negotiations secured a rescheduling of Indonesia’s foreign debts and attracted aid through a group of donor countries. The complex regulations governing economic activity were simplified. In 1967 a new foreign investment law provided a framework for new private capital investment.
Economic development
The results of Suharto’s reformulated economic policies were soon apparent. The rate of inflation decreased, and the national currency, the rupiah, stabilized; manufacturing expanded rapidly; and petroleum production increased, owing partly to exploration by a number of foreign companies operating through Pertamina, the monolithic state oil corporation. (Pertamina’s position as the centrepiece of Indonesia’s economic expansion ended in 1975, however, when the government rescued the company from its indebtedness.) Military entrepreneurs played a significant part in these developments. In the mid-1980s the decline in oil prices led to a shift in economic emphasis toward private-sector investment and the production and export of manufactured goods to reduce reliance on oil and other traditional export commodities.
These new policies had their critics, both inside and outside the country. To some it seemed that the republic was becoming economically dependent on Western capital and, in particular, on large transnational corporations, that direct foreign investment had created an Indonesian merchant class that boosted its affluence and influence through dealings with foreign companies, and that new wealth had exaggerated existing inequalities rather than removing them. Others, however, argued that long-term improvement depended on the economic growth that would flow from policies designed to encourage large-scale investment rather than small-scale labour-intensive developments.
In any case, the economic achievements of New Order policies were spectacular. They transformed the developmental patterns of the archipelago during the 1970s and ’80s, especially outside Java. Historically the political centre and economic hub of the East Indies, Java seemed to retain that position within the modern republic, commanding about three-fourths of all new investment projects (excluding oil exploration) from the late 1960s to the early ’80s. The expansion of manufacturing during that period was also concentrated in Java. This apparent dominance, however, was undermined by the density of the island’s population. In terms of its per capita share of foreign investment, Java was outstripped by some of the outer provinces. North Sumatra (Sumatera Utara), the home of the great plantation expansion of the late 19th century, added mining and oil and natural gas exploration to its estate agriculture. Mining and oil had an even greater impact on the development of Aceh, Riau, and East Kalimantan (Kalimantan Timur), as well as Indonesian New Guinea, called Irian Jaya during this period. Again in per capita terms, East Kalimantan, with timber in addition to oil, natural gas, and coal, attracted high levels of both foreign and domestic investment, and it became one of the most rapidly developing provinces of the republic. By contrast, the provinces of the Lesser Sunda Islands—West Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Barat), East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur), and East Timor (Timor Timur; now an independent country)—were economically the least developed in both absolute and per capita terms. Successive five-year plans implemented by the Indonesian government emphasized the importance of redressing regional disparities and spreading economic growth more evenly.
Free enterprise grew rapidly during the 1990s, the last decade of the New Order, but the principal business owners were the sons and daughters of the president. Suharto claimed that his children, as citizens of the Republic of Indonesia, had the right to run their businesses; the problem was that they received immense privileges in their business dealings. Members of the Suharto family ultimately controlled the full range of strategic economic sectors—not only the petroleum industry but also toll roads, banking, television broadcasting, and billboard advertising. Moreover, their economic activities extended into all realms—international, national, and provincial. The bureaucracy typically had no choice but to accept the business proposals of the Suharto family, usually without going through the proper bidding procedures. Discontent grew among the public.