Indonesian conservatives are rewriting the 32-year history of the late second president Soeharto, a former army general, champion of corruption and destroyer of democracy.

They want him promoted to the status of a national hero along with first president Soekarno, the man he overthrew. It’s selective memory time in the nation next door smothered with irony.

The first modern humans are believed to have lived in what’s now the Indonesian archipelago for about 60,000 years, leaving a legacy of myths and facts, legends and languages. Although many are taught in schools with pride, more recent events are off the curriculum.

As astronomer Dr Carl Sagan said: “You have to know the past to understand the present,” but in Indonesia, learning about the near times can be taboo. Prime is Soeharto’s record, how he came to power, who he was representing and what dirty deals he was doing.

(The present President Prabowo Subianto has also got a murky past of alleged human rights abuses when dealing with insurrectionists in East Timor and West Papua last century. These put him on a US and Australian visa blacklist.)

About half the nation’s present population of 285 million was born after 1998, when Soeharto was forced to quit due to democratic student uprisings. Few know the whole story, as the tame local media endorses the “ Smiling General” as though a forced grin made him a benign champion of the wong cilik – the wee folk

The “national hero” proposal for Soeharto is not getting traction among the political classes with memories, or those who have read histories published overseas. The Republic currently has 206 “national heroes” – 16 are women. Most have come from politics and the military.

The nomination of Soeharto has been accompanied by slogans like “It was good in my days, ya?” Not all are persuaded, including Soekarno’s daughter Megawati, who apparently remembers Soeharto’s snub when she wanted her dad buried in Jakarta for easy access. His tomb is 750 km distant, in East Java,

This year thousands of imitation skulls were scattered around a Jakarta hotel “as a symbol of how dark and terrifying the New Order era of former president Soeharto was”, according to an activist group called Volunteers for Democratic Struggle.

The international Union of Catholic Asian News website claimed, “Suharto’s iron-fisted rule from 1967 until his resignation in 1998, after a mass uprising, is considered one of the most brutal and corrupt in the 20th century.

“His administration was accused of mass rights violations, arbitrary killings and the disappearance of thousands, including alleged communists, students, and ethnic Chinese.”

Indonesians are poorly educated when measured against their peers elsewhere, a fact that worries economic and social planners. The latest survey has Indonesia ranking 62nd among 72 nations whose teen students were tested for abilities to meet future needs.

The _Program for International Student Assessment_ is run by the OECD “to measure the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science to see how well they can apply their learning to real-life challenges”.

With so much lousy schooling, a hard-nosed look at the late autocrat’s rule is overdue, including the reminder that some campaigns were driven by fear.

During the mid-1980s, Petrus was Soeharto’s idea to make Jakarta’s streets safe for folk who rarely call the police for help lest they cop a shakedown.

Petrus is a contraction of Penembakan Misterius – mysterious killings. As Indonesians are big on black magic, the term worked on practical and spiritual levels. It brought back law and order by dispensing with those democratic essentials.

Academics called it “prophylactic murder”.

Prabowo, another one-time career general, has been refreshing the Soeharto tough-guy ideology through militarising the civil administration and expanding the army’s grip on society.

Its modern manifestation is the US military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, where it’s alleged the crews are drug runners. The dead can’t deny.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called for an investigation: “These attacks and their mounting human cost are unacceptable. The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”

Between 1983 and 1985, Jakartans who woke early to pray found roads to the mosques blocked. With corpses. The death squads had worked overtime.

By dawn, the gore had dried but the bodies’ eyes were propped open in fear as they lay sprawled on the asphalt or leaning against street signs.

Once the population had got the message that the army had orders to shoot first and never ask questions, anyone thinking of some after-hours fun of break-ins and car thefts might reconsider their entertainment.

How did the gunmen know who was a criminal, political rival or just a nuisance neighbour who cooked smelly curries? They didn’t, but who cared? The presumption of innocence was a namby-pamby ideal for Western fusspots who favoured sentencing by impartial courts, not target-hunters.

Some estimates put the victim numbers around 10,000. Others far less, but whatever the data, the policy worked and the burbs became safe. Another triumph for the former army general who knew a couple of truths: All power comes from the barrel of a gun, and court processes are messy.

Petrus has yet to return, but Prabowo reckons military men make the best rulers of a civil society that’s gone slack or become annoyingly corruption-free. Jobs in provincial administration are now being run by men in uniform with qualifications in killing, but not peace-making.

Indonesia’s national hero-in-waiting was a kleptomaniac, according to Time, accumulating US$32 billion in public funds during his Washington-backed Orde Baru (New Order) anti-Communist regime.

The weekly said it spent four months on investigations in 11 countries for another story, The Family Firm; This alleged the former president and his kids had grabbed Indonesian land about equal to the size of Belgium.

The magazine lost a libel action over its 1999 cover story, Suharto Inc (alternative spelling) and was ordered to pay almost US$93 million. This was later overturned by Indonesia’s Supreme Court.

The list of alleged wrongdoings, killings and rip-offs is extensive, but the late Prez could still become a national hero.

Deputy Minister of Social Affairs Agus Jabo Priyono told journalists that the authority to grant the title lay with the Palace.

That means Prabowo, Soeharto’s former son-in-law through a failed marriage to the old man’s second daughter, Siti Hediati Hariyadim, 69, will adjudicate.

She’s a businesswoman and politician in her former hubby’s Gerindra (Make Indonesia Great) Party. She used to belong to Berkarya (work), the party of her brother Hutomo Mandala Putra (aka Tommy).

He allegedly orchestrated the murder of the judge who sentenced him to 15 years’ jail for corruption in 2000. He was released on parole after serving four years.

Bedraggled Indonesian victims shorthand the complex, economically-strangling and morally debilitating system as KKN – Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme. Every presidential aspirant claims it’ll get fixed.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.