'I Never Betrayed My Country'
"Prabowo Subianto is blamed for the violence surrounding the fall of Indonesia's Suharto. Now the former general tells his story"
By JOSE MANUEL TESORO. Articles and Photos courtesy of Asiaweek Magazine

THE "COUP"
On June 30, 1998, in a meeting with leaders of the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council, Habibie recounted how Prabowo had threatened him. According to council member Hartono Marjono, Habibie said he received a report from his military aide Lt.-Gen. Sintong Panjaitan that Habibie's home had been surrounded by Kostrad and Kopassus troops. Panjaitan, said the president, had saved the First Family by airlifting them to the palace. Marjono says that there and then he objected to Habibie's story. He said it was impossible that Prabowo would have threatened Habibie since in the days leading up to Suharto's resignation, Prabowo urged everyone he knew to support Habibie. But his opinion, Marjono says, "just passed by Habibie."

Habibie told a similar tale to London's Sunday Times. "My house was surrounded by two lots of troops," he said in an interview published Nov. 8, 1998. "One, the ordinary troops responsible to Gen. Wiranto, who ordered a cordon to protect me and one lot belonged to Kostrad, responsible to Prabowo." On Feb. 15, 1999, Habibie told a gathering of Asian and German journalists in Jakarta: "Troops under the command of somebody whose name I will not hide - Gen. Prabowo - were concentrated in several places, including my home." At that time, he indicated Wiranto had reported the situation to him and protected him.

The main problem with all the versions of Habibie's story is that the troops that guarded his house had been ordered there not by Prabowo but by Wiranto. At the May 14 command briefing, the armed forces chief had directed that Kopassus guard the homes of the president and vice president. These orders were confirmed in writing on May 17 to senior command, including Syafrie, the Jakarta garrison commander at the time, who showed me a copy of the order. In testimony to parliament on Feb. 23, 1999, Wiranto said bluntly: "There was no coup attempt." When I asked Habibie to respond to Prabowo's assertions, his aide Dewi Fortuna Anwar replied for him "that it is not necessary for Pak Habibie to make any direct rebuttal of Prabowo's claims." She suggested talking to several people, including Panjaitan, all of whom she believed were present on May 22 at the palace. Despite repeated attempts to contact these people throughout our reporting, when this story went to press on Feb. 23, they were either unavailable or unwilling to comment.

Prabowo believes he could have launched a coup during those chaotic May days. But his point is that he did not. "The decision to fire me was legal," he says. "I knew that many of my soldiers would do what I say. But I did not want them to die fighting for my job. I wanted to show I placed the good of the country and the people above my own position. I proved that I am a loyal soldier. Loyal to the state, loyal to the republic."

THE KIDNAPPINGS
The armed forces had always held that Prabowo had misinterpreted his orders regarding the abductions of the activists early in 1998. In front of the military honor council, Prabowo admitted "his wrongdoing" but now also insists he was following orders known to the rest of his colleagues. Prabowo's superiors, former armed forces chief Feisal Tanjung and his successor Wiranto, consistently deny that the order had come from them, or from supreme commander Suharto. Prabowo says he was never told directly the honor council's verdict. "I just heard on the radio," he says. "These guys didn't have the guts to face me and call me." He still objects. "I would like to say this," Prabowo asserts. "Everything I did, I did with the knowledge of my superiors, with their consent and under their orders. It might not be all in the chain of command, because some of my bosses like to work jumping through several levels. But I say this categorically." The intent of the operation, he says, was to stop the bombings. "We wanted to prevent a campaign of terror," he says. Most of those apprehended, he says, were already on the police wanted list. But, he says, "in hindsight, I was careless." He never visited the cells of the abducted activists, and trusted reports from the men assigned to the operation. He says he never ordered torture.

Activist Lustrilanang says that, while in jail, two others told him they were indeed planning to plant bombs. The PRD's Feisol Reza, one of the abducted, denies any involvement by his party. "The military made the bomb issue up," he says. "We're just victims." Lustrilanang, however, points out that ending the bombs could not have been the only objective. He believes that he and others were also taken to prevent their demonstrations from disrupting the March 1998 MPR session. Prabowo says it was a single operation. "I have my suspicions," he says, "but in the end, it is still my responsibility." According to KONTRAS, at least a dozen activists are still missing. Lustrilanang says that at least three of those were imprisoned with him. Prabowo expressed surprise at this revelation, and said he did not know the fate of those still missing. He will still not reveal the identity of the source of the order.

"A CONSUMMATE OUTSIDER"
Prabowo's involvement in the abductions and his overt support for Habibie probably doomed him in the eyes of both the public and Suharto. But that loyalty to both president and vice president could be the strongest evidence against the assertion that he launched riots or a coup, which would have endangered both of them. The question may not be why Prabowo turned against his father-in-law and his friend, but why they turned against him.

Part of the reason is Prabowo. "He thought of himself as an insider, but he was a consummate outsider," says U.S.-based historian Daniel Lev. His foreign upbringing gave him a Western outlook, which worked against him in the politics of Suharto's army and family. Even his Muslim credentials were considered lacking by the radicals he is often grouped with. He wanted too much change to satisfy conservatives, yet he himself was too much of the old regime to be accepted as a reformist. If he did grab power, he acknowledges, as Suharto's son-in-law he would have been seen as sustaining a regime's interests. In short, he was too much out of place, and in the end, out of time.

Another factor had to be his reputation - real, imagined or created. That reputation may have led some TGPF members to believe a certain theory about the riots. That reputation could have perpetuated a possible misunderstanding about the security around Habibie. That reputation allows him to still be linked with Indonesian violence, like the continuing turmoil in Maluku.

These are the easy explanations. Others are tougher. After May, Wiranto was labeled "pro-reform," "professional," someone who would "safeguard his country as it inches to democracy." For a while, he was more popular than Habibie, and was in the running for the presidency, despite his demonstrated loyalty to Suharto. How did he manage to marry such opposites? Other questions: Why did Wiranto insist on taking senior command to East Java on May 14? Who was responsible for the military "statement" about Suharto? Why allow students into parliament and let them stay there until Suharto's resignation?

Prabowo admits his version is exactly that - his own. The same events might have been seen differently by others: Suharto, Habibie, the children, Wiranto. "I have to be very fair," says Prabowo of Wiranto. "He wanted to reform but he also had political ambitions." In his own eyes, Prabowo was loyal. To others, his actions could have seemed those of a deadly rival, a traitor, a conspirator. Mutual suspicion, confusion and misunderstandings must have had a role in the May drama. Every key player may have thought the others were out to get him. If Indonesian politics is supposed to be shadow play, then it is possible to be frightened by each other's shadows.

One can still find plot and counter-plot. But to see more than conspiracy at work is to release the complicated truth from the cage of a convenient fiction. Whatever the reality behind the riots, the stories since have proven particularly useful. "After the TGPF," KONTRAS's Munir points out, "what emerged was that Wiranto is someone who couldn't be found responsible, when actually in the political structure he was the most. This was Wiranto's political victory: to obtain a ticket to enter a new regime [when] really he was part of that which was overthrown." Would Wiranto's military consolidation and political rise have been possible without the end of Prabowo?

Prabowo's shadow has been drawn like a blanket over the riots, the kidnappings, abuses in various regions, much of the post-Suharto violence. He has saved a lot of people a lot of explanations. "He shouldn't be singly blamed for everything," attorney-general Darusman told Asiaweek. "That's the easy way out." But it was the route taken. With scapegoats, no one need explain the persecution of a man, the stalled careers of others. No one need reveal the fate of still-missing people. No one need admit responsibility. As long as enough believe that everyone's troubles will vanish if someone else - a person, a community - can be blamed and then eliminated.

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