The Soeharto dilemma

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 09/21/2007 3:04 PM | Opinion

If former president Soeharto was celebrating his legal win against Time magazine, it would have been short-lived.

The United Nations and the World Bank have placed the former dictator on top of their list of alleged embezzlers, and will help the government of the country he once led trace the assets he allegedly stole from it during his 32-year rule.

The ill-gotten money allegedly amassed by Soeharto is estimated at between US$15 billion and $35 billion. This amount would account for between 18 percent and 43 percent of government spending for the whole of 2007.

Both the Time ruling and the joint move by the two world organizations to launch the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative on Monday only underline our legal system's weakness in investigating, let alone prosecuting, Soeharto over this mega-corruption case.

The fact that the UN and the World Bank have introduced a new scheme aimed at helping developing nations recover assets pilfered by corrupt leaders implies a distrust in Indonesia's judicial system when it comes to taking on the powerful.

This lack of confidence has been apparent in the continuing demands for an international tribunal for Indonesian Army generals implicated in gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999. These generals have escaped sentences, while some have even won promotions.

Despite this distrust, the joint initiative is the helping hand Indonesia needs after almost a decade of thwarted efforts to recover state assets allegedly stolen by Soeharto, his family and his cronies.

There were hopes, later proven to be false, that the reform movement that toppled Soeharto in May 1998 would lead to his trial. The People's Consultative Assembly issued Decree No. XI/1998 which orders an investigation into corruption, collusion and nepotism involving the former president.

However, post-Soeharto administrations have found it hard to fulfill the Assembly's decree, restricting themselves to formal legal measures that are insufficient to settle such an extraordinary case as Soeharto's.

Our law enforcers are dancing to Soeharto's drumbeat. His claims of ill health have helped him avoid trial, a strategy that has been adopted by other former officials to escape justice, or at least buy time.

Soeharto's lawyers are correct, therefore, when they say their client is innocent. After all, he has never been convicted by a court. But it seems he is considered clean only in his own country. The world community, through the UN and the World Bank, see things differently.

State prosecutors are now bringing a civil lawsuit against the former president for alleged embezzlement through one of his foundations, with damages sought from him amounting to Rp 15 trillion. But many believe the momentum has already been lost, and the move will only lead law enforcers to a dead end.

It is a good thing that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will take time out his visit to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly next week to talk to the World Bank about what they can do to recover the money.

But such discussions alone are far from enough. The UN and the World Bank can only provide the basics. The bulk of the job is in Indonesia's hands. It has been apparent from the outset that our leaders' lack of political will has helped Soeharto remain untouchable.

The example of the Philippines should have taught Indonesia a lesson on the bold measures needed to deal with the corruption of former leaders. Former president Corazon Aquino declared the wealth amassed by her predecessor, the kleptocratic dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a result of corruption and froze it. It took the Philippines a decade to finally convict Marcos and recover the stolen assets, but they did it.

There is a pressing need to deal Soeharto's case outside the ordinary legal system. This requires the same courage that Indonesia found when the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly stripped founding president Sukarno of his power in 1967 and when the Assembly impeached President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001.

Prolonged legal measures, which have proven ineffective, will only drag things out. Indonesia will continue to lose respect in the international community for failing to clean up this mess inherited from the past.

Our leaders deserve respect when it's due, but they should not be above the law.

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