Unspun

Justice, said Nietzsche, is the spirit of revenge. So it is that there are lots of people queing and clamouring for justice where Suharto, now apprently on his deathbed, is concerned.

Should Suharto be pardoned, as the Government is wont to gdo, or Should justice be served and Suharto be punished? I think there is a case for granting amnesty to despots who willingly step down.

The reason is simple: if we seek revenge for past deeds it becomes a precedent. Any despot of the future will not step down because he knows that he will have revenge visited upon him and his family. So he hangs on to power for dear life. In the process hundreds, maybe thousands of lives may be lost, as others try to pry him from office.

 But if amnesty is extended to despots like Suharto who willingly stepped down when the time came, then it encourages other despots to step down without having to shed blood.

This aside, the shrill cries for action against Suharto are interesting and very Indonesian in nature. If you read the newspapers, you rquickly realise that what Suharto's detractors want him to stand trial for is corruption.

It is intellectual shortcut-ism. By branding him as a corrupto, he is automatically guilty and this removes the onus from his critics to substantiate what he has actually done that is illegal or wrong.

The same mindset is present whenever the Indonesian media and pundits talk about the tycoons who were left owing the state huge debts during the Asian Economic Crisis of 1997-98. Most referrences to them were as "corruptors". There is very little reference to what they actually did that was wrong.

This mindset contributes to the opaqueness of events and developments in Indonesia.