Suharto (8 June 1921-27 January 2008) was President of Indonesia from 27 March 1968 to 21 May 1998, succeeding Sukarno and preceding B.J. Habibie. Suharto brutally suppressed a communist rebellion in 1965 before supplanting Sukarno and assuming the presidency in 1968, establishing the authoritarian "New Order" regime, which reigned until his resignation in 1998.
Biography
Suharto was born in Kemusuk, Java, Dutch East Indies in 1921, and he was trained as a bank clerk and joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army in 1940. After the Japanese invasion, he became a policeman, and in 1945 joined the republican forces in central Java to fight the Dutch. After independence, he rose within the ranks of the Indonesian armyto become commander of the forces which occupied West Irian in 1962. In 1965, he was responsible for defeating the communist coup. In its aftermath, he purged the government and administration of communists and other possible opponents to the state, and dismantled Sukarno's power. In 1967, he became acting president himself, and in 1968 formally succeeded Sukarno. He headed for a nepotist and corrupt regime, which remained ruthlessly anti-communist. This earned him assistance from the United States, despite the brutality of the government, not only in occupied areas like East Timor, but in Indonesia itself, where, according to Amnesty International, hundreds of thousands of opponents of the regime had been killed. Despite a modest relaxation of repression during the 1990s, he failed to create a popular base, relying on military support instead. Following a 1997 financial crisis and riots in May 1998, Suharto resigned, and he died in 2008.