Guy Beres

Paul Keating must have had some time on his hands this week. Fresh from sinking his teeth into the recently departed P.P. McGuinness, the former Prime Minister has leapt to the defence of former Indonesian dictator Soeharto in the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald today. Keating’s choice of public reaction to each passing is an interesting contrast to say the least. The common thread running through his “obituary” columns this week is that he has taken something of a contrarian view in each. McGuinness’ death was widely lamented by both friends and critics alike, whereas (in the Australian print media at least), Soeharto was subject to near universal condemnation following his death. One imagines that Keating was probably moved to write these columns out of disgust for the universal welter of praise for the former, and the universal welter of critiques on the latter.

Is it fair to suggest that the media’s reaction to the death of each of these individuals has been unbalanced? Pushing political correctness for a side just for one moment, I think that is probably the case. The reality is that McGuinness was not necessarily the messiah of political enlightened thought and intellectual rigour that he has been portrayed as following his death. Similarly, the reality is that while Soeharto was responsible for some truly dastardly things, his reign was neither completely disastrous nor ineffectual for the people of Indonesia. As Keating outlines it, there is a reasonable line of argument suggesting that on the whole, Australia’s life in a foreign policy sense could have been a lot more difficult over the past few decades if not for Soeharto:

Soeharto took a nation of 120 million people, racked by political turmoil and poverty, from near-disintegration to the orderly, ordered and prosperous state that it is today.

In 1965, countries such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe were in the same position as Indonesia then. Today, those countries are economic and social wrecks. By contrast, Indonesia is a model of harmony, cohesion and progress. And the principal reason for that is Soeharto.

Keating’s concluding paragraphs serve as an interesting reminder of how perceptions of people in public life can be coloured by one’s circumstances and where one lives:

When the acting Foreign Minister, Robert McClelland, and I arrived in Indonesia for Soeharto’s funeral last Monday, we drove the 30-odd kilometres from the airport at Solo to the mausoleum where he would be buried alongside his wife. For not one metre of those 30-odd kilometres, was there no person present. In some places they were six and eight deep, all holding their baskets of petals to throw at his cortege. They all knew they were burying the builder of their society and all felt the moment.

How many Australian leaders would have a million or so people to grieve for them beside the roadway? Soeharto’s funeral was a tribute to what his life truly meant. I felt honoured to have been there but more than that, to have known him.

Obviously the fact that he had (and has) his supporters in Indonesia hardly exonerates Soeharto in relation to the disturbing things his regime was responsible for, but it is nevertheless food for thought. The “heroes” and “villains” of history as portrayed in the media are never the one-dimensional characters that they seem to be (or perhaps, that some of us would like them to be).

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under Paul Keating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.