I am beginning to notice a truly surreal correlation between Britney Spears’ latest breakdown and former President Soeharto’s health worries: the gossip, the anticipation and the niggling feeling that the whole thing has been staged. Apparently I am not alone. This morning, those brave people on the Jakarta Post‘s editorial staff reminded us that this has all happened before:

The latest instalment has, as always, sparked debate on what to do with the General. Apart from the billions that disappeared from the government’s coffers during his 32 year reign, there are the countless human rights abuses that occurred under his watch go unpunished. Does anyone remember East Timor?

Even so, there is a seriously large number of Indonesians out there who look back at his reign through proverbial rose-tinted glasses. Some see him as the man who saved Indonesia from communism, overlooking the fact that this was achieved by murdering anyone suspected of being a communist. What followed was one of history’s bloodiest massacres with hundreds of thousands of alleged communists murdered by Soeharto’s militias. A decade later, he “saved” East Timor from the same fate, by invading it and then brutally suppressing the Timorese in what is now considered one of the most serious violations of human rights during the second half of the twentieth century.

Many credit him as the architect of modern Indonesia, without whom Indonesia would not have experienced the development and growth it did. Of course, he had vast oil resources on hand to help and much of the so-called prosperity was achieved by selling off Indonesia’s valuable resources to foreign investors. And let’s not forget that he and his cronies benefited the most from Indonesia’s new found prosperity.

What is undeniable is that corruption flourished under corruption to the point that it now cripples both the economy and the fabric of society. This is his legacy, not a modern economy or the defeat of communism.