The Magic of Alex: the Afterglow

Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer reviews former Indonesian dictator Suharto’s record:

Mr Downer said Indonesia’s treatment of East Timor was always a thorn in the relationship.

“We were plagued of course ... with the issue of East Timor,” he said.

“And of course president Suharto will have to live with that as part of his record as well.”

Memo Alex: Not only has Suharto not been president for almost ten years, he’s also no longer in a position to “live with” anything. It’s the Timorese and Indonesians who have to live with it.

And apparently the record of one of the world’s great kleptocrats escaped Alex’s attention:

Mr Downer said Australia was not aware of the full extent of corruption under Suharto’s rule.

He said human rights abuses in East Timor were discussed, but corruption did not feature in the dialogue between the two countries.

“We didn’t know too much about the level of corruption, but we knew about the human rights record,” he said.

Gee. If the Suharto Gravy Train didn’t rate in Alex’s perceptions, then small wonder that AWB malfeasance in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal passed him by.

What had the Australian people been paying Alex for, all those years?

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Bugger!

The condition of former Indonesian dictator Soeharto has improved and he has a good chance of recovering, his doctor said yesterday.

I guess it takes more than hoping.

Doctors said privately he had been near death.

Near enough ain’t good enough for the Castro of the Far East...

Soeharto ruled Indonesia with an iron hand for 32 years and has been accused of hundreds of thousands of murders and disappearances.

Hanging’s too good for him! The tyrant should, like Saddam, have been ‘taken out’ years ago...

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Suharto on the mend or maybe not

At first, reassuring news for dictator worshippers:

Suharto is improving, but his condition is still critical.

But now maybe celebrations should be put on hold:

Doctors in Indonesia say the condition of former president Suharto is deteriorating, with signs of internal bleeding and a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Hopefully Suharto’s next public appearance will be in a glass-lidded coffin.

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Give a dictator an even break

In a recent column Greg Sheridan pleads, “If only Pervez were more like Suharto.”

Sometimes the word dictator can prevent clear thinking in the Western liberal mind, as often does the word war. But, as George Orwell observed, wars have results, and different wars have different results, depending who wins.

So it is with dictators. There are more and less ruthless, bloodthirsty, legitimate and effective dictators. The quality of the dictator influences profoundly the quality of the nation.

Ooh, Sheridan has my head spinning with all this ‘realist’ talk of mach politik... but I will persevere and take the plunge with him.

Sheridan denounces Musharraf as “a weak, ineffective and foolish dictator” because, for instance, he has failed to stem the rising tide of Islamist extremism in his country. Apparently such extremism in Indonesia is not an issue for Sheridan, forgetting that it’s almost certainly an issue for the victims of the Bali bombings and their families.

By contrast, Suharto was presumably a strong, effective and astute dictator, a veritable pin-up boy of dictatorhood by Sheridan’s lights.

Suharto was a dictator and there were many bad things about his rule, especially his human rights record. But here’s the complex bit: he built a modern Indonesia that was capable of sustaining democracy.

It may not occur to Sheridan, but it may be the case that Indonesian democracy survived despite Suharto, thanks to the aspirations and dedication of millions of his countrymen.

But okay, giving the much-maligned Suharto the benefit of the doubt, surely Sheridan doesn’t need it pointed out to him that Suharto had over two decades, not to mention thousands upon thousands of bloody corpses, head-start on Musharraf.

It’s early days yet, so Musharraf may yet earn his place in Sheridan’s pantheon of benevolent despots. Give a dictator an even break!

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Certainty affirmed

“I don’t know about my future but I am certainly the Foreign Minister.”

• Alexander Downer, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs

Australians all will breathe a sigh of relief at this affirmation that Mr Downer is keeping his eye on the ball for Australia.

“We are only focusing on winning the election. That is all we are thinking about at this stage and that is a big job.”

Our taxes at work. But still, Mr Downer has his finger on the pulse of Australia’s national interest on the world stage; for instance, with regard to General/President Musharraf’s experiments with Pakistan’s democracy...

“Well, he’s certainly, by certain standards, well he’s certainly by some standards a dictator.”

Well, Mr Downer is certainly on the right track there, the right track, certainly. Of course, as with Soeharto, the unequivocal denunciations will come after the General has gone on his merry way.

According to Prime Minister John Howard, Soeharto’s Indonesia was “not a democracy in the sense we understand it.”

After the fall of Soeharto, of course, it suddenly became safe for the Howard Government to describe that particular strong man as “a dictator”.

In the case of Musharraf, the diplomatic niceties are nominally in the service of Australia’s national interest in the ‘war on terror’.

In Soeharto’s case, it was all about the war on communism... No wait, Domino Theory was pre-1990, so in the Howard Era it must have been about keeping our strong-but-unstable-neighbour-to-the-north on side, in a ‘constructive engagement’ that mutually benefited both Australian commerce and, in a round-about, trickle-down sort of way, the Indonesian people.

Well anyway, the certainty is that a pretext will always be found to selectively coddle ‘our’ preferred sons’a’bitches.

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