ASEAN Architect Suharto Passes On

Last Sunday was a sad and a historic day in Southeast Asia as General Suharto, a key architect of ASEAN, left this world at age 86. It seemed like any other day in Indonesia and the world. There was a state funeral but few world leaders mourned his passing. However, the General's close friends and co-architects of ASEAN, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yu and Malaysia's Mahathir Muhammad, reportedly made a visit to his deathbed and wept.

"Lee, 84, and Mahathir, 82, paid what they knew would be their final respects to a former comrade-in-power, in a moment pregnant with symbolism as the curtain was drawing on a key regional actor. The death of Suharto, the most senior of the three ASEAN octogenarians, marks the beginning of the end of a defining generation of regional leaders", said Yang Razali Kassi of Pacific CSIS.

General Suharto leaves a mixed legacy for Indonesia and the entire region. He ruled with a firm hand over a diverse and sprawling country. Many will remember him for the rapid progress made by Indonesia and the ASEAN region that transformed both from agrarian and natural resource based economies to modern industrial economies. Others will recall the deaths of millions of Indonesians in the Communist purge, the human rights abuses in Indonesia and the horrors in East Timor and Aceh that took place on his watch.

Lee Kwan Yu and Mahathir Muhammad, the other two important architects of ASEAN, share many things in common with General Suharto. It was, therefore, quite natural for them to weep at the General's deathbed and think about their own legacies.

The questions that will continue to be asked are: Could the ASEAN economic transformation have been achieved without such leaders? Are other leaders elsewhere in the world inspired or horrified by such legacies? Would countries such as Pakistan be transformed economically in the same way? Are there better days ahead for them?

Here's a video clip on Suharto Legacy: