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Shunned Soehartos attempt political comeback


AFTER more than a decade in the wilderness, the family of Indonesia's former ruler Soeharto is making a comeback into political life, staging a bold attempt to wrest control of the Golkar party created by their father and re-establish a dynasty that foundered amid the mayhem that ended his dictatorship.

For Tommy Soeharto - the youngest of the six Soeharto children and a flamboyant playboy who spent four years in prison for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge - the motives could not be purer.''I have a moral obligation to help advance the party which was founded and built by my father,'' he said in announcing his candidacy for the chairmanship of Golkar last month.With his criminal record and notorious reputation as a strongman and corrupter, Tommy's bid for power could struggle. But attention is turning to his eldest sister - Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, widely known as Tutut.

Either way, says a political analyst, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, the motives for the ''Cendana family'' - the name used for the Soehartos in Indonesia in reference to the former dictator's compound in the suburb of Menteng - lie not in trying to continue their father's legacy but rather with an eye to the 2014 presidential elections. It is an investment in their business future.''The reason is economical,' ' a senior researcher with the Indonesian Survey Institute, Burhanuddin, said. ''In Indonesia, economy and power are like two sides of a coin. If you want to enjoy economic privilege you must have a strong bargaining power in politics. So the Cendana family, I believe, is seeking a chance in the 2014 presidential election for the sake of their business.''As we know, SBY [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] cannot run again as president due to the constitutional barrier. So, anyone who wishes to contest the 2014 election must start their political investment today.''During the corrupt decades of Soeharto's rule, his family is believed to have amassed a fortune of about $15 billion.

The palatial apartments in Hong Kong, London and Boston remain, but much of their astonishing wealth has been frittered away amid forced divestments, bad business decisions and profligate lifestyles.Tutut still controls a lucrative toll road concession and Tommy's Hampuss conglomerate is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but by the standards of Indonesia's mega-rich the Soehartos have fallen well down the pecking order. ''They have been persona non grata for a decade,'' said one Jakarta business figure. ''Nobody has wanted to partner with them. Now they want to restore their position.''A former confidante of Soeharto - who asked to remain anonymous - described a family that, apart from Tommy, remains cloistered in palatial homes, rarely venturing into Jakarta society. ''Sigit [the eldest child] likes to go bowling at night . The rest of the time he is just sleeping.''Golkar, once the dominant political force in Indonesia, is a shadow of itself, commanding voter support of just 15 per cent in this year's parliamentary and presidential polls.As Burhanuddin remarks, its internal politics are ''transactional' '.

That is, the top job goes to the person who hands out the most largesse to branch cadres. ''It's happy days at the moment if you are a Golkar branch boss. The money is coming from everywhere,' ' a businessman said.As such, predicting the outcome of October's Golkar conference is fraught. Most analysts regard it as unlikely that Tommy will triumph. But they say Tutut - who served as a minister in Soeharto's government and was widely seen as his heir - could emerge, at the very least, as a kingmaker, reasserting the Soehartos' influence over Golkar.Whether Golkar can resurrect itself as a political force is another matter. Certainly, in light of the country's democratic and economic progress, few in Indonesia seem to hanker for the days of Soeharto's New Order.

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