Bitter Discovery

Jakarta, Thursday, 13 April 1995

‘Well, my son, what is of such importance that it deserves a special audience with the President of the Republic of Indonesia?’

The old man stared down at Dr Amin from behind his massive, ornately carved teak desk, mounted like a pagoda on top of a teak podium. He continued talking without inviting Amin to move from his inferior spot in front of the platform.

‘I can only presume it must be such excessively good news that you can’t wait to share it with me.’ The old man paused, giggled rather nastily and then continued. ‘Or perhaps so terrible that you dare not keep it to yourself!’

The President smiled at his own joke while Dr Amin gulped at the accuracy of the President’s comments and began to sweat.

Suharto was dressed, as was Dr Amin, in the formal, open-necked, quasi-military tunic top that was the hallmark of Indonesian politicians. The main difference was that Dr Amin’s tunic top was charcoal grey and that worn by His Excellency General Suharto off-white. A colour that no one but the President was allowed to wear.

President Suharto looked tanned and fit and, with his balding head fringed with wispy white hair, the old man had all the outward appearances of a kindly old uncle. His moon-like face was clean-shaven and without wrinkles except for a few around the eyes which could have been caused by smiling. He glanced at Dr Amin standing reverentially before and below the Presidential Desk. President Suharto removed his metal-framed glasses and focused closely on Dr Amin, who did not react.

‘Amin, are you with me?’ snapped the kindly uncle.

Dr Amin was not. His mind had once again escaped to the mists of Surabaya and to the journey through life that had brought him to the Presidential Palace and today’s fateful audience.

The old uncle’s irate voice drifted into Dr Amin’s consciousness… ‘Amin, are you with me?’

Dr Amin jumped out of his safe dream world and smiled deferentially. He knew that there was extremely little about President Suharto that in reality resembled a kindly old uncle and that the lines around his eyes were certainly not caused by excessive smiling. Kindly old uncles don’t defeat Communist coups at the age of forty-four and, thirty years later, remain in charge of the fifth most populous country in the world. There might be many excellent qualities about President Suharto – however, being a kindly old uncle was not among them. Even Dr Amin, one of the President’s confidants, and someone whom the President addressed as ‘son’ during relaxed moments knew better than to push his luck with the old man.

Dr Amin shifted his position slightly. He was, at the end of the day, a slightly overweight fifty-four-year-old not used to standing to semi-attention for any length of time. He knew he couldn’t avoid the moment any longer. He would have to start explaining the problem to the President. Dr Amin decided that reinforcing the bond of friendship between him and President was as good a way as any of launching into what was going to be a difficult subject whichever way he approached it. Dr Amin took a deep breath, cleared his throat and prepared himself for battle.

‘Thank you, Pak, for agreeing to see your son at such short notice,’ Dr Amin said with excess politeness while using the deferential short form for Bapak, meaning uncle. Amin paused. Something was wrong… They weren’t alone. He looked across the President’s office and saw two other people standing at the far corner of the massive room. One, a slim man in his early thirties, stood silently in the corner leafing nonchalantly through a magazine. Amin swore under his breath as he recognised President Suharto’s second son Bambang. Bambang grinned superciliously at Dr Amin, enjoying the obvious discomfort being experienced by The Minister of Agriculture. Dr Amin cursed again quietly while nodding his head in acknowledgement in the direction of Bambang. There was no chance now of playing the old-boy card. The old boy in question would have to maintain great face in front of his biological son.

The most privileged dilettante offspring of the President of Republic of Indonesia and the farmer’s boy from Banding made good hated each other’s guts. However, they demonstrated this in an extremely Javanese and indirect way. This was particularly so when they were in the presence of the one man who called them both ‘son’. This man, however, knew well their feelings for each other. He was quietly glad about this mutual dislike since it gave him another card to play should it be necessary in controlling either one or both of them. You never knew when this would be necessary. And you didn’t remain in control of countries of the size and complexity of Indonesia by being unprepared.

In view of the undesirable presence of Bambang, Dr Amin decided to shift his approach to the President from a friendly one to one based on professionalism heavily laced with flattery. He took another breath and launched into his excessively respectful monologue.

‘Pak, as you know, at this time of year I instruct our agronomists to focus all their attention on the prospect for the crop projections for our staple commodities. In particular, rice and sugar.’

The President remained motionless, staring hard at Amin with unfriendly, calculating eyes as he weighed up every word Amin said and evaluated each for a hidden meaning.

Dr Amin cleared his throat and continued. ‘I know how important it is that the people who live throughout our thousand or so inhabited islands have sufficient food in their bellies to keep them happy. This is critical for the continued stability and prosperity of our great country.’

Dr Amin glanced up at the President, who was now staring intently at his fingernails. There was nothing for it but to press on.

‘In 1969, Pak, you identified so correctly the importance of sugar in our daily diet. In your first five-year plan you set targets to increase its production. Urn…’

Suharto looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Er… well, as you know, ever since then my Ministry has striven to make our country self-sufficient in sugar. Despite the, er, the enormous demands placed on us by a population of almost 190 million we… urn… had so far managed to achieve your goal and…’

‘What the hell do you mean, “had”?’ barked the kindly old uncle, standing up behind his desk and staring down at the hapless Minister of Agriculture.

Amin started to explain the delicate but deliberate use of ‘had’ but was cut short by Suharto.

‘There can be no “had” about it. You can’t have 190 million people spread over fourteen thousand islands going without sugar. It’s part of their daily diet. It’s a basic. It keeps them happy and gives them energy. No, no, my friend, there can be no “had” about it. That would be, as you well know, a recipe for disaster. Both for me and needless to say for you as well.’

At the back of the room, Bambang’s smirk grew larger, not only because of Amin’s discomfort but also because he now saw the glimmerings of a commercial activity that could make his personal net worth even greater.

Dr Amin started fighting for his life. Now that at least part of the problem was on the table he felt more relaxed and confident. The adrenaline started flowing through his tubby body.

‘Pak, it is precisely because of the importance of this matter that I sought an audience with you straight away when I saw signs of a potential problem,’ lied Amin, returning the stare from Suharto’s unfriendly eyes.

In reality he had screamed at length at his agronomists. The haranguing resembled the President’s recent outburst but delivered in much more colourful language as befits a son of the soil.

Dr Amin had ranted and raved… There was a mistake… There had to be a mistake… There was no way that a plentiful sugar crop that had been growing steadily for many years just vanished because of a period of unnaturally wet weather… The satellite crop pictures had to be wrong… That poxy, bloody, damn stupid satellite launched by the Ministry of Technology to prove it had the know-how to be in the space race had to be sending wrong information… The bloody Americans must have some devious plan to destabilise the world’s largest Muslim population… They had probably chosen an extremely sensitive part of the world to take the spotlight off their own domestic difficulties regarding the recognition of Vietnam. Something had to be wrong… ‘Go and find out what it is or your collective balls, if you have any, will be on the chopping block.’

In truth, however, Amin knew that as Suharto had implied, the balls that would be first to be disconnected from their rightful owner belonged to the Minister of Agriculture.

Dr Amin had sweated, cursed and sworn for three days as the information was checked and rechecked. On-site surveys were taken of the main sugar cane producing areas of Java. At the end of the day the news was not good. It seemed that three factors had combined to reduce the sugar crop to below self-sufficiency levels: floods, the change from growing sugar cane to cocoa and selling off agricultural land for real-estate development.

This much alone was sufficiently serious to threaten Amin’s long-term ownership of his new ministerial Mercedes 500. But there was even worse news. The five hundred thousand tonne National Strategic Sugar Reserve had more or less disappeared into thin air at just the time when it would be needed because of the domestic shortage. The combination of these two events must surely be sufficient to ensure that a vital part of Amin’s anatomy disappeared along with his flashy car.

The quiet removal of ninety per cent of Indonesia’s Strategic Sugar Reserve had to be an inside job involving all sorts of well-connected people in the Indonesian hierarchy. It was just unfortunate for them that the lid had been blown off a game, which had probably been going on for years, by a totally unpredicted need for the stockpile.

In the complex way of Indonesia, the whole situation would almost certainly be hushed up by the President and some of his cronies. It had to be, in order to protect the interest of a few well-connected people whose Swiss bank accounts were almost certainly, as a result of its disappearance, millions of dollars richer than they might otherwise have been.

‘Go on,’ commanded the President.

Dr Amin wondered again how to present the next part of his story. He had been there when the auditor from the international surveying company first struck concrete. The surveyor had been plumbing the depths of what, until then, had been classified as a sugar mountain. Suddenly it became little more than an anthill. Further investigation revealed that enough concrete pyramids to make an Egyptian envious were present in warehouses spread throughout many of Indonesia’s inhabited islands. Each pyramid was covered with just enough sugar to create the effect of a grubby Mont Blanc inside each of the major strategic sugar warehouses.

That was three weeks ago. Dr Amin could still recall vividly his amazement and the sickly sinking feeling as the gauge passed through one foot of sugar and then struck the top of a forty-foot pyramid of concrete blocks.

‘But the fact is,’ continued Dr Amin, ‘the, er, fact is that… urm…’

‘Get on with it, Amin, you are beginning to get on my nerves,’ snapped the kindly uncle.

‘Well, sir,’ continued Dr Amin, having abandoned Pak as the situation deteriorated, ‘the fact is that, due to excessive property speculation by the Chinese, causing a reduction in land under sugar cultivation, combined with the recent floods all the signs are that we are… um… er… likely, we are likely to suffer an… a… significant sugar shortage at the end of this crop year.’

‘How much is significant?’

Dr Amin drew in his breath; this was it. ‘About half a million tonnes… er… sir.’

Dr Amin felt a weight lifted from his chest, having delivered half of the bad news. Not only that, but he had managed to blame the Chinese for most of it. Since the rest of the bad news concerning the disappearance of the strategic stockpile most likely implicated people close to the President, Amin felt that he would be on marginally safer ground when explaining this part of the story.

He would have loved to start his announcement with the news about the fraud. However, he had to play his cards extremely carefully. He was unsure as to what extent the disappearance of the sugar had been the beneficiary of a presidential blind eye. As it was, although Amin couldn’t put his finger on why, he had developed a strong feeling during the course of his presidential audience that the sugar fraud had in fact been going on without the President’s knowledge.

Bolstered by his renewed feeling of confidence, Amin continued.

‘I regret, Pak, there is even more bad news.’

‘You’ve got to be bloody joking!’ grumbled the President.

‘Sir, I wish I was. However, I’m afraid that the remainder of what I have to tell you is even worse than it would seem at face value.’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ demanded the President. ‘For God’s sake, Amin, stop talking in damn riddles and get to the point… I’m getting old and don’t have time left for all this beating around the bush.’

Dr Amin paused and glanced in Bambang’s direction. If the President didn’t know what was going on, then did the son? He would soon find out. Having got over the worst part of the story he was going to enjoy the next bit.

‘I can only conclude that what has happened involves people in positions of responsibility taking advantage of their rank to exploit our beloved country.’

Dr Amin listened to himself and was rather pleased with the way that what he was saying sounded as the words tumbled out of his podgy mouth. Further emboldened, Dr Amin continued reverting to the familiar form of address.

‘Get on with it,’ growled the uncle.

‘It would appear, Pak, that some of these so say responsible people, have been abusing their positions and somehow selling on the world market the sugar that should have been our strategic sugar stockpile. They have done so in order to take advantage of today’s high sugar prices. I believe that their intention was to replenish the stock at a later date once the world price of sugar had fallen and they could buy back at a lower price than the one they sold at, thereby making a quick speculative profit. However, unfortunately for them, and for our country, we will have need of the stock now. And it’s nowhere to be found. At this stage, Pak, I’m not clear exactly who is involved or how they have operated the fraud.’

The President grunted in disbelief. ‘And how much, pray, does… or did… the disappearing stockpile amount to?’

‘Um… er… about another 450 thousand tonnes, sir.’

‘Holy shit,’ blurted out the President, ‘that makes a total shortfall of almost a million tonnes!’

Dr Amin glanced in Bambang’s direction and then continued. ‘Sir, I was obviously deeply shocked to find that it seems that trusted people have been abusing their positions of authority to make money out of our beloved country in this manner. I can assure you, Pak, that I will get to the bottom of this crime and bring the culprits to justice. I presume an offence of this magnitude against the state would carry with it a mandatory sentence of capital punishment?’

Dr Amin hoped that he had not gone too far overboard with the last statement.

Bambang, who until this time had said nothing, coughed politely and looked pointedly at his father whose face clouded like thunder. There was a long pause while father and son stared silently at each other. Finally, the President turned his attention to Amin and started to speak in measured tones that carried none of their earlier belligerence.

‘My son, I am obviously extremely upset to hear the news you are telling me. I appreciate the customary thoroughness with which you have carried out your duties. Not only that but the promptness with which you have kept me informed of this most unfortunate state of affairs.’

As he spoke the razor-sharp mind of the kindly old uncle was turning over all the aspects of what he had just heard. He evaluated the different options available to him. Politically, the last thing he needed at any time in a country of the size and diversity of Indonesia was hungry, unhappy people. Back in the early days of his first five-year plan his only concern was to get rice in the bellies of what were then 150 million people. Amin was right, the plan had been amazingly successful. Today 200 million Indonesians had full stomachs and a much higher standard of living than in 1969.

Although the man in the street no longer worried about starvation, he still focused very much on the quantity and quality of everyday food he would be able to afford. The importance of sweet things, ranging from sickly, luminous gelatine and coconut milk desserts to heaped sugar in the strong local coffee, had grown immensely over the last twenty years. In addition to being an increasingly frequent part of the daily diet, they had become a sort of status symbol. An easily tasted barometer of one’s wealth.

A sugar shortage would certainly not cause social unrest on the scale prevailing when Suharto defeated the Communists thirty years earlier. But nevertheless, an almost total lack of sugar would probably seriously upset a large number of Indonesians and would be particularly worrying with elections just around the corner.

Election time was traditionally a period when he made sure that abundant amounts of rice, sugar and other daily necessities were readily available. Nothing should be allowed to happen that would upset the equilibrium of the ordinary Indonesian and deter him from voting for the President.

And then there were the bloody Chinese who posed an altogether different problem. A small group but, by and large, rich as hell. Over the years they’d done a reasonable job of transforming themselves into Indonesians. Mr Tan might well have localised his name to Mr Sutanto, speak Javanese, wear a local coloured batik shirt and somehow look a bit browner than the original version. Scratch the surface, however, and the real commercial Chinese Mr Tan would be revealed lurking not far below.

The commercial success of the Chinese was resented bitterly by the average indigenous Indonesian, and was the source of continued acrimony simmering below the surface of daily life. Every now and then the situation boiled over. A relatively minor incident was often the cause. A traffic accident. A car, supposedly owned – but certainly not driven – by a Chinese that knocked an Indonesian off his motorbike and did not stop. Abuse by a Chinese employer of an Indonesian maid. Even a quite minor incident could be a sufficiently large spark to ignite the tinder-dry racial, religious and economic animosities. Animosities that always lay just below the surface in this country of a thousand islands.

What followed was inevitably not pleasant. One of the unusual characteristics of the normally easy going and genial indigenous Indonesian, shared with Malays as a group, is that under certain conditions he flips. It is as though life just gets too much for the poor chap and he simply loses his rag and goes berserk. There was even a word for it: amok. When going amok is combined with racial hatred, the result could well be, and indeed had been, the looting and destruction of Chinese-owned property and many hundreds of thousands of dead Chinese.

The kindly uncle knew that Amin was raising the spectre of Chinese-property speculation as being a cause of the sugar shortage to save his own skin. The analysis, however, was probably not far from the truth, or at least the popular interpretation of the truth by the Indonesian in the back street or smallholding. If news of the missing strategic stockpile ever leaked out, then surely a Chinese hand would be seen behind its disappearance and one could expect a nasty anti-Chinese backlash. Suharto could, on no grounds, risk any repeat of earlier racial troubles. He had to find out himself who was behind the missing stockpile before the zealous Amin unearthed the truth.

The President was realistic enough to know that in matters of this magnitude many powerful names within the Indonesian governing elite could be involved either directly or indirectly. These names needed to be dealt with carefully. The whole situation had to be extremely delicately weighed up. Any one of these names might be useful to him either now or in the future. There was no point of making a show in the Western way and publicly sacrificing anyone. You never knew who could be of use later on, or who might find a way of exacting his own retribution.

‘Shit!’ The old man swore viciously to himself at the weight and complexity of this unanticipated problem.

Finally he spoke to Amin who was still standing to semi-attention in front of the desk and beginning to feel weak at the knees.

‘Let me make sure I understand this correctly: the conclusion of your rather lengthy explanation is that, for a variety of reasons, we risk running out of domestically produced sugar. Correct?’

‘Er… yes, sir.’ Dr Amin tensed, anticipating a sting in the tail of the logic.

The old man nodded and then continued. ‘In normal circumstances we would turn to our strategic stockpile to get us by. However, we now discover that the stockpile has mysteriously disappeared. Right? Although how the hell half a million tonnes of anything can just vanish stretches credibility to the maximum.’

‘Sir.’

‘Yes or no, Amin?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So the conclusion of this bloody awful mess is that we need to buy enough sugar both to feed the hungry mouths and to rebuild the stockpile. In round figures the amount needed is one million tonnes. Right?’

‘I am afraid so, Pak,’ said Dr Amin. Marvelling at how much simpler the situation seemed when told by the President.

‘Well, I’m bloody well afraid so too,’ said the President, suddenly looking tired and swaying slightly.

The third figure, who up till now had been had been sitting quietly in the far corner of the office, quickly moved up to the President and helped him to sit down at the large desk.

‘Don’t worry, Dukun,’ said the President to his personal physician. ‘I’m not about to snuff it yet despite what Amin did to me on his damn badminton court the other day!’ Turning to Dr Amin he continued, ‘Mind you, if he breaks any more news about potential national disasters I’m not sure if it will be any good for my health… or his!’

Dr Amin decided to remain dutifully silent as the President breathed deeply for a few moments. Finally the old man put on his glasses, sighed heavily and stared directly into Dr Amin’s eyes.

‘All right, Amin, this is what I want.’ He lowered his voice slightly. ‘Firstly, this news is to be kept strictly confidential between you and me and the others in this room. You will ensure that no one person in your Ministry has the full picture or indeed access to sufficient information to build up the complete picture of what has happened. Understood?’

Dr Amin nodded gravely, knowing that there was no way he could comply. After the tantrums he had thrown during the past few days the whole damn Ministry from the janitor to the deputy director knew about the problem. However, now was not the time to split hairs.

‘Secondly, you will leave the investigation of the missing stockpile to my security people. I will deal with this as I see fit.’

I bet you will, thought Dr Amin.

‘Thirdly,’ the President paused, ‘you will approach the Fangs with the utmost discretion as always and ask them to come here for an immediate meeting. Tomorrow if possible.’

Dr Amin continued nodding his acceptance of the instructions given as though by a schoolmaster to a pupil. Once the President had finished, Amin felt he ought to speak to reassert his position before beating a hasty retreat from this chamber of horrors.

‘Is there anything else you would like me to do, Pak?’

Suharto growled, paused for a few seconds, and then spoke quietly yet deliberately.

‘Nothing else except for you to know that I hold you personally responsible for sorting out this whole damn affair with the utmost discretion. Your job depends on it.’

Having delivered his instructions, the kindly uncle started shuffling through his papers indicating that the extraordinary meeting was over.

Dr Amin made good his escape from the President’s office and collapsed once again into the back seat of his car, relieved that the ordeal of the meeting was over and that he was, at least for now, anatomically complete.

The Minister of Agriculture gave Akbar the order to move and the Presidential Guard snapped a brisk salute. ‘Better send that cowboy at my Ministry for training here,’ muttered Dr Amin. The outriders switched on the lights and sirens on their BMW motorbikes. Followed closely by the smiling Akbar, they launched themselves into the traffic, which dutifully moved out of the way of the VIP like fish before a shark.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it, thought Dr Amin as he lay back and relaxed in his favourite toy. A toy that was, for the moment at least, still his.