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Soeharto clan faces uphill battle to return to power
Ex-first family remains political pariah two decades after downfall.
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T
he landslide victory of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the namesake son of the Philippines’ late dictator, in the May 9 presidential election has prompted questions over the fate of the Soeharto clan in Indonesia, 24 years after the late president was toppled.
Soeharto family members have made repeated attempts in the past to get into politics, often seeking to tap into nostalgia about the perceived security and political order under Soeharto’s military regime.
These attempts, however, have been fruitless – and all other things being equal, it is unlikely that the family will regain its former clout in Indonesian politics, analysts say.
“After Soeharto was removed from office, almost all of his supporters surrendered, and were unable to re-establish a political footing. Despite many attempts to convince the public, it was, and is still, very hard to defend Soeharto’s family name. Therefore, up to now, they have been unable to occupy key positions,” Firman Noor, a senior researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) told The Jakarta Post recently.
Cendana family
During his last days in power, Soeharto appeared to groom his children for political leadership. In 1988, when he was appointed president for the fifth time by the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), his children were seen at the inauguration ceremony, an event regarded as symbolic of the family’s attempt to consolidate its power.
Such speculation was not entirely far-fetched. Four years later, Hutomo “Tommy” Mandala Putra, Siti Hardijanti Rukmana – popularly known as Tutut Soeharto – and Bambang Trihatmodjo were appointed as MPR members after joining the Golkar Party, the political machine that propped up the Soeharto regime.
Tutut, who served as Golkar’s deputy chairperson from 1993 to 1998, was even appointed as social affairs minister in Soeharto’s final and short-lived Cabinet.
The reform movement that started in 1998 and which led to their father’s resignation destroyed the political ambition of the Soeharto clan.
With strong anti-Soeharto sentiment in the early days of the Reform Era, Soeharto’s children were immediately purged from the Golkar leadership. They were only able to return to the party a decade after the end of their father’s political career.
While graffiti and memes about New Order nostalgia – commonly expressed in the phrase, “Piye kabare, uenak jamanku toh?” (Hi, how are you? It was better in my time, eh?) with a picture of a smiling Soeharto waving in the background – began to spring up in recent years, the Soeharto clan, also known as the Cendana family, still struggled to make its political comeback.
Post-Golkar defeats
Perhaps the only sign left of the family’s possible return was the image of Tommy standing beside his somber-looking late father seen on a red-and-yellow-painted banner outside the office of Parsindo, a minnow party that did not even qualify to contest the election, on Jl. Antasari in South Jakarta.
“After losing the [Berkarya Party] in court, Tommy was looking for a political party with which he tried to merge. Six political parties have narrowed down to one that still has a political network and remains active,” said Jusuf Rizal, chairman of Parsindo, who claimed to have known Tommy for 17 years, to the Post on Monday.
Tommy lost control of the Berkarya Party, the political party he established in 2016, in March this year following an internal power struggle over different stances toward the administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
The youngest son of Soeharto established Berkarya after he resigned from Golkar following his failed attempts to secure the party’s top post. In 2009, Tommy sought to run in Golkar’s chairmanship race but failed to secure enough support to get nominated. After failing for the second time, he decided to give up on the party.
Tommy is not the only one trying his luck in post-Soeharto politics.
His older sister Siti Hediati Herijadi, better known as Titiek Soeharto, joined Golkar in 2012 and was able to win a seat in the 2014 legislative election. Titiek, who was married to Gerindra Party leader Prabowo Subianto before a fall-out between the latter and the family, opted to leave Golkar and join Tommy’s Berkarya instead in 2018.
Tutut, meanwhile, has been repeatedly endorsed by the National Functional Party (PKPB), a pro-Soeharto party, as a potential presidential candidate. The party, however, has consistently failed to get enough votes to enter the House of Representatives, let alone the required number of votes to field its own presidential candidate.
The Post attempted to reach Tommy and Titiek for a comment on this story but was unable to do so.
‘Reselling’ Soeharto
Political analysts have said that the unlikelihood of the family’s return as a major political force was because the family had clung to the idea that the New Order was a powerful marketing gimmick and thus chose to present themselves as its political heirs.
“Unlike Bongbong, who has tried to portray himself as someone who is somewhat different from his father, Soeharto’s family tried to resell Soeharto’s era from the get-go,” Firman said. “This has not worked well, as the public’s collective memory of the New Order is still strong.”
Soeharto, who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years, was ousted when the country descended into economic paralysis and political chaos.
The late president and his family were accused of nepotism and corruption, with family members and close associates amassing fortunes and coming to dominate Indonesia’s economy.
In 2000, Tommy was found guilty of graft relating to a land deal in a verdict that was later overturned. He was sentenced in 2002 to 15 years in prison for paying a hitman to gun down and kill the Supreme Court judge who had convicted him in the corruption case. His term was later reduced on appeal and by remissions, and he was released in 2007.
Soeharto is gone, oligarchs stay
Since the fall of Soeharto, the intriguing web made up of loyal political supporters, business interests and military generals that kept Soeharto in power disintegrated and abandoned the Cendana family, political scientists said.
Soeharto’s downfall, however, is not necessarily seen as the ultimate end of the New Order, with many of the regime’s former supporters still having an outsized influence in Indonesian politics achieved through democratic or non-democratic means.
“The oligarchs that once kept Soeharto in power no longer revolve around Soeharto’s family. They are now supporting some former Soeharto loyalists,” Wawan Mas’udi, lecturer at Gadjah Mada University, said.
The Cendana family, he said, were now left politically out in the cold.
“They might still have economic capital to engage in politics, but that [economic power] has not translated well into political capital,” Wawan said. (ahw)
