COVER: GOING IT ALONE As he begins his seventh term as President, Suharto packs his cabinet with political cronies and continues his standoff with the IMF, further raising the stakes for a struggling Indonesia CAMDESSUS INTERVIEW: "We are not always right" 2+2=5: For ordinary folk, the numbers don't add up VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Congress is fed up with Suharto	ASIA	March 23, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 11
	As Indonesia's economy worsens, President Suharto turns defiant, rejecting the West's advice and naming a crony-filled cabinet By TERRY McCARTHY Jakarta hortly after 9 a.m. last Wednesday, President Suharto stepped to the podium in Jakarta's parliament building to make one of the most critical speeches of his long political life. He had just been appointed to his seventh five-year term as President of a country whose very economic survival suddenly seemed in doubt. Five days before, the International Monetary Fund had announced it was suspending payment of $3 billion in emergency aid because of Jakarta's resistance to economic reforms, and nervousness at a potential Indonesian collapse was being felt across Asia and as far away as Washington. At home, students were demonstrating on campuses around the country calling for Suharto to step down. The Indonesian rupiah, valued at 2,400 to the U.S. dollar last July, had fallen below the 10,000 level. As Indonesia's leader prepared to speak, people were glued to their television sets across the country: mothers who had stopped breast-feeding to get jobs that now don't pay enough even to cover the cost of powdered milk formula for their babies, urban workers who have been fired but are too ashamed to go back to their native villages to seek family help, Chinese shopkeepers who fear rising prices will make them targets of further violent protests, fund managers who have seen their Indonesian portfolios shrink to a quarter of their value from nine months ago, foreign bankers agonizing over a de facto moratorium on repayment of $70 billion in debt held by Indonesia's corporate sector. What would the 76-year-old general say about his dispute with the IMF, a showdown that has come to resemble a poker game with stakes higher than anyone could have imagined even two months ago? Would he announce the controversial plan he has been considering to peg the Indonesian rupiah to the dollar, a seemingly desperate quick fix that many economists warn would rapidly fail, leaving the country in even worse straits? Would he tell the international community to get lost, as some of his more nationalist ministers had been hinting? Or, with warning lights flashing everywhere, would he embrace the types of reforms that have already begun to revive Asia's two other sickest economies, Thailand and South Korea? Cover: Photograph of a campaign poster by David Paul Morris [  Page 1 |  Page 2 | Page 3 |  Page 4  |  Page 5  ]
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