The Rhetoric
“One man, his attitude, his approach, his philosophy of development. He wasn’t interested in building an empire…He was serious. It has to do with belief in God, democracy, justice and amongst other things, development. That’s what he wanted. And because of that, Asean has prospered.”
– Lee Kuan Yew on Indonesia’s President Suharto, National Day Rally, 1990The Reality
“..the stink of nepotism and corruption around the Suharto government grew as he began promoting avaricious relatives and business cronies to the cabinet. It was the economic collapse of 1997 which sealed the president’s fate…On 21 May 1998, President Suharto resigned, just two months after he had been re-elected for a seventh term by the country’s rubber-stamp legislature.”
– BBC, Sept 28, 2000