Suharto should not have been overthrown back in 1998. Indonesia was not ready for democracy, there was no leader of Suharto's calibre who was capable of taking over his mantle. Instead, we have four presidents in eight years, and Suharto's fall made way for venal and inferior-quality politicians capable only of riling up hatred and suspicions amongst Indonesians, while robbing state coffers for their own benefits without anybody strong or feared enough to stop their depradations.

Worse, Suharto's fall greatly weakened Indonesia's secular nationalist Pancasila ideology at the time of international rise of Islamic radicalism. Such ideological vacuum allowed nutcase foreign ideology like Salafi jihadism to take root amongst a few of the many ideologically confused Indonesian Muslims. If Suharto was still in power, it is guaranteed not a single bomb would explode in Indonesia, and 92 Australians would not have died in Bali.

Suharto's fall also gave space to primitive ethnic-chauvinism a la Hitler/Milosevic amongst Acehnese and some Papuans. Luckily Indonesian military is still strong and these ethnicities only made up a molecule of water in Indonesia's ocean of diverse ethnicities (750 in total), hence in a few years these primitive ethnic-separatism has been successfully neutralised.

I strongly suggest President SBY to assert stronger control of the country and curtail the excessive "freedom" aka anarchy that still engulfs our country. President Putin of Russia should be a good example. Otherwise, it will take years, even decades, for Indonesian economy to grow like it did under Suharto or for Indonesian politics to be as stable as it was under Suharto. Meanwhile, the rest of the world would've passed Indonesia by. Indonesia at this stage in history works worse under free-for-all "democrazy" and works best under authoritarian rule.

What Australians can do is support Indonesian economic recovery and participate in fighting Islamic extremists that had killed many of your citizens. And stop giving sympathy to fringe groups with no future such as primitive Papuan separatists. All you will achieve by this is exarcebating anti-Western hatred amongst Indonesians that would only benefit Islamic extremists.

"Proud to be Indonesian", you obviously know very little about your own country's history and economy. Indonesia's GDP per capita is already about double what it was in 1998 when Soeharto resigned - his country in a shambles. He might have achieved high rates of economic growth for a while, but Soeharto's legacy was to leave it with 13% negative growth, 75% annual inflation, rioting in the streets of Jakarta, ethnic bloodshed, weak civil institutions, capital flight, a successor president lacking in legitimacy, and no mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. Soeharto effectively "froze" Indonesia's political development back in the 1970s and it is the governments since his "lengser" that have had to make up for this by developing workable democratic political, constitutional, economic and legal institutions in the space of a few short years - thanks to Soeharto's dictatorial neglect.

Some patriot who calls ethnic groups in his own country "primitive" and is so distrustful of his own people that he thinks they are better ruled over by a dictator again!

Rogindon

It is clear you are ignorant about Indonesia's history and economy. Indonesia's GDP shrinkage and hyperinflation in 1998 was caused by IMF's program of liquidating banks and forcing the govt to implement high interest rate and contractionary fiscal policy. The consequence is bank run and collapse of banking system, while high interest rate and austerity program killed economic growth and caused hyperinflation. Suharto's fatal error was to surrender to IMF threats, as all Asian countries which didn't accept the IMF recovered quicker than those who did. That Indonesia's economy managed to recover is testimony of Indonesia's resilience despite Suharto's fall and IMF mismanagement.

Face the fact, it is the power vacuum following Suharto's fall that led to anarchy, with opportunistic Milosevic-like politicians easily provoking Indonesians to hate each other, triggering ethnic bloodshed in Poso, Ambon, Sambas, Sampit, Aceh, and Papua. None of the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives in these disturbances would've died had Suharto stayed in power.

Under "democracy", no figure is strong/feared enough to control politicians who protect terrorists and promote intercine conflict. Abubakar Bashir managed to avoid long jail sentence thanks to protection from Islamic politicians. Suharto did a very great job keeping Islamists in their place, which is jail or in exile.

About primitiveness, there is no other way to describe ethnic-chauvinism of GAM or OPM, unless you are one of those who think of Hitler's Nazism as modernity. Now that these primitive separatists have been neutralised, Indonesia need to control rampant corruption amongst local and national politicians, and to put down Islamists and their terrorist cohorts who are intent on turning Indonesia into an Islamic country. This can only be done under at least a semi-authoritarian rule.

At the current stage, seeing how easy it was to trigger ethnic conflicts and terrorism, it is clear Indonesia is not yet at the historical stage for democracy. Like China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Russia, Indonesia is still a country that needs strong authoritarian rule to work properly. Even Europe took thousands of years to develop democracy, becoming fully democratic only in early 1990s.

rogindon,
I wouldn't be surprised if Proud to be Indonesian sees himself as the new Messiah Dictator that Indonesia needs for its salvation. He sees uneducated unnarmed tribal people as a threat to Indonesia; obviously a fixation of his own power hungry mind. Though university educated it resides in a mind obsessed with authorative control over simple people.

You are right in saying that many of the conflicts were caused by the power vacuum left in the wake of Soeharto's fall in the 1998-2001 period. Dictatorships have a habit of leaving power vacuums because they usually do not provide any mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. There was an even worse power vacuum when the Dutch (and other colonialists in the region) left in the 1940s and then again when Sukarno fell in 1965-66.

Look at the transfer of power from Megawati to SBY in 2004 from one democrat to another. It was incredibly peaceful because it was done THROUGH INSTITUTIONS - not through the barrell of a gun. Eight years after Soeharto's fall, the power vacuum has now largely been filled and ethnic tensions subsided.

See how much more efficient democracy is and how much less bloodshed it causes! Indonesia's GDP is currently growing at 6% per annum under a democratic government whose legitimacy was obtained via the ballot box. Would you have preferred SBY to have taken power through a coup and the murder of civilian politicians? I don't think you give your own countrymen enough credit for what they have achieved.

Even most of the fundamentalist Islamic groups like Partai Keadilan Sejahtera are using the ballot box to voice their aspirations for Sharia law and they are being defeated through the ballot box and through the votes of the MPR. Isn't that better than using guns and prisons?

Finally, you say we need dictators to stop politicians from engaging in graft and forming alliances with terrorists, but what if it is the dictators themselves who are corrupt terrorists?

Papua Merdeka !