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View all search resultsEven for those born after his heyday, Soeharto still casts a dark shadow
Yet, memories of Soeharto's heavy-handedness in governing the country have been passed down to these twentysomething youths during their formative years. Thus, it has become easier for them to denounce the plan from President Prabowo Subianto's administration to bestow national hero status upon the former general.
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A boy walks past a mock cemetery seen as a symbol of the victims of the Suharto's regime, as activists held a tribunal on February 12, 2008, in Jakarta, to judge Suharto's cases before he stepped down in 1998 (AFP/Adek Berry)
F
or Indonesia’s Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, life under the iron rule of the late president Soeharto is a condition they did not have to experience directly, as the strongman stepped down in 1998 after 32 years in power.
Yet, memories of Soeharto's heavy-handedness in governing the country have been passed down to these twentysomething youths during their formative years. Thus, it has become easier for them to denounce the plan from President Prabowo Subianto's administration to bestow national hero status upon the former general.
The Social Affairs Ministry, the institution charged to select candidates for national hero recognition, has come up with a list of 40 candidates, names that the ministry claims to have come from the “public's aspirations”.
Currently, the decision to grant Soeharto the title of a national hero is pending an approval from Prabowo, who was once married to Soeharto's daughter Siti Hediati Hariyadi.
For many Indonesian Gen Zers, Soeharto continues to loom large.
“I was born during the chaotic year of 1998,” 27-year-old copywriter Kenny Andriana from Bandung, West Java, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. “Even though I didn’t live through Soeharto’s regime, his presence can be felt all over my family history, or rather, the parts that were erased.”
Kenny’s family is of Chinese descent. His grandfather, who bragged his family’s Chinese heritage, dropped the Chinese names of his children in the wake of anti-communist pogroms in 1965, which were launched by Soeharto to obliterate the remnants of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
