Understanding or Defending Suharto

This is an unusually expensive political biography, particularly when discussing how Suharto grabbedand finally lostpower. Unfortunately, it fails to systematically discuss the general's abuses of power.

March 12, 2002

SUHARTO, A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
Author :Robert Edward Elson
Publisher :Cambridge University Press, 2001, 389 pp.

It is very hard to determine Suharto's role in the present (Indonesian) history. After he stepped down as president in 1998, history seems to have removed from him the attributes of grandeur he held for dozens of years. His military superiority, as recorded in films such as Janur Kuning and Serangan Fajar, is now being questioned. Suhart

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