User:The man from Gianyar/Suharto

Suharto ( ; 8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian Army officer and politician, who served as the second and the longest serving President of Indonesia. Widely regarded as a dictator by international observers, Suharto was president for 31 years from the fall of Sukarno in 1967 until his resignation in 1998. The legacy of his 31-year rule, and his US$38 billion net worth, is still debated at home and abroad.

Suharto was born in the small village of Kemusuk, in the Godean area near the city of Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. He grew up in humble circumstances. His Javanese Muslim parents divorced not long after his birth, and he lived with foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation of the country, Suharto served in the Japanese-organized Indonesian security forces. During Indonesia's independence struggle, he joined joining the newly formed Indonesian Army. There, Suharto rose to the rank of Major general by the time full Indonesian independence was achieved.

An attempted coup on 30 September and 1 October 1965 was "countered" by Suharto-led troops. According to the official history made by the army, this attempt was backed by the Communist Party of Indonesia. The army subsequently led an anti-communist purge and Suharto wrested power from Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. He was appointed acting president in 1967 and elected president the following year. He then mounted a social campaign known as "de-Sukarnoization" to reduce the former president's influence. Support for Suharto's presidency was active throughout the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, the New Order's authoritarianism and widespread corruption were a source of discontent and, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis which led to widespread unrest, he resigned in May 1998. Suharto died in January 2008 and was given a state funeral.

Under his "New Order" administration, Suharto constructed a strong, centralised and military-dominated government. An ability to maintain stability over a sprawling and diverse Indonesia and an avowedly anti-communist stance won him the economic and diplomatic support of the West during the Cold War. For most of his presidency, Indonesia experienced significant industrialisation, economic growth, and improved levels of educational attainment. Plans to award the status of National Hero to Suharto are being considered by the Indonesian government and have been debated vigorously in Indonesia. According to Transparency International, Suharto is the most corrupt leader in modern history, having embezzled an alleged US$15–35 billion during his rule.

Name
Like many people of Javanese origin, Suharto had only a single name. Religious contexts in recent years has sometimes referred to him with the title "Haji" or "el-Haj Mohammed Suharto", but these names were not part of his formal name or generally used. The spelling "Suharto" reflects modern Indonesian spelling, although the general approach in Indonesia is to rely on the spelling preferred by the person concerned. At the time of his birth, the standard transcription was "Soeharto", but he preferred the original spelling. The international English-language press generally uses the spelling 'Suharto' while the Indonesian government and media use 'Soeharto'.

Early life
Suharto was born on 8 June 1921 in a plaited-bamboo-walled house in the hamlet of Kemusuk, a part of the larger village of Godean, Sultanate of Yogyakarta, then under the rule of the Dutch colonial government. The village is 15 km west of Yogyakarta, the cultural heartland of the Javanese people. Born to ethnic Javanese parents, he was the only child of his father's second marriage. His father, Kertosudiro, had two children from his previous marriage and was a village irrigation official. His mother, Sukirah, a local woman, was distantly related to Hamengkubuwono V by his first concubine.

Five weeks after Suharto's birth, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown; he was placed in the care of his paternal great-aunt, Kromodirjo as a result. Kertosudiro and Sukirah divorced early in Suharto's life and both later remarried. At the age of three, Suharto was returned to his mother, who had married a local farmer whom Suharto helped in the rice paddies. In 1929, Suharto's father took him to live with his sister, who was married to an agricultural supervisor, Prawirowihardjo, in the town of Wuryantoro in a poor and low-yielding farming area near Wonogiri. Over the following two years, he was taken back to his mother in Kemusuk by his stepfather and then back again to Wuryantoro by his father.

Prawirowihardjo took to raising the boy as his own, which provided Suharto with a father-figure and a stable home in Wuryantoro. In 1931, he moved to the town of Wonogiri to attend the primary school, living first with Prawirohardjo's son Sulardi, and later with his father's relative Hardjowijono. While living with Hardjowijono, Suharto became acquainted with Darjatmo, a dukun ("shaman") of Javanese mystical arts and faith healing. The experience deeply affected him and later, as president, Suharto surrounded himself with powerful symbolic language. Difficulties in paying the fees for his education in Wonogiri resulted in another move back to his father in Kemusuk, where he continued studying at a lower-fee Muhammadiyah middle school in the city of Yogyakarta until 1939.