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![]() Friday, February 20, 1998 Published at 18:09 GMT ![]() ![]() ![]() World: Analysis ![]() Indonesia: BJ Habibie profile ![]() BJ Habibie: family friend of President Suharto
Jonathan Head reports from Jakarta on the controversial man likely to become Indonesia's Vice President, BJ Habibie.
The appointment of Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie as Indonesia's Vice President is now little more than a formality. He has the endorsement of the country's powerful armed forces and the dominant Golkar party.
Mr Habibie was born on the island of Sulawesi in 1936. In the 1950s his family got to know the current President, Suharto, then a military officer posted to Sulawesi, who took the aspiring engineer under his wing.
"Leapfrog"
"The basis of any modern economy is in their capability of using their
renewable human resources. The best renewable human resources are those
human resources which are in a position to contribute to a product which uses a
mixture of high-tech."
The theory convinced President Suharto. In the mid-1970s he gave his protege his own government department and unlimited funds to build South East
Asia's first aircraft industry.
National airliner is not selling
"I have some figures which compare the cost of one kilo of airplane compared
to one kilo of rice. One kilo of airplane is thirty thousand US dollars
and one kilo of rice is seven cents and if you want to pay for your kilo of
high-tech products with a kilo of rice, I don't think we have enough."
Mr Habibie's problem is that his planes have not sold well. Indeed in an
ironic twist, he has sometimes accepted rice instead of cash in order to get a
sale. The national aircraft industry has been widely condemned as a waste of
money and now it has lost its government funding under the terms of the recent
IMF aid package.
Some Indonesians feel he is the worst possible candidate for Vice President including the anti-Suharto campaigner, Mochtar Buchori: "He is a big spender. He also practices nepotism now. With Habibie coming in there will be two people practising nepotism - Suharto and Habibie."
National achievements
But Mr Habibie does have his admirers inside Indonesia. His projects are
always presented as national achievements to the Indonesian public, and he has
courted senior Islamic figures, an astute move in this predominantly Muslim
country.
Achmad Tirto Sudiro, leading member of the Habibie-sponsored Islamic Intellectuals Association: "He has now shown that he has the ability to achieve something. When he came back to Indonesia, the President asked him, how much time do you need to set up a plane factory and he said ten years. He started and was able to produce two to twelve. I am of the opinion that he has the vision of how to build this country in the future."
Next stop President?
"No, to be frank. I am only interested in the answer to where should I be to
give the maximum contribution to my society and the human race. But I am sure
that until my last minutes of being alive, I will always dedicate myself to my
society."
Few would believe such denials now when Mr Habibie is on the verge of
moving just a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Under the provisions of the constitution, he would take over from President Suharto should he die or leave office during his next five year term - a real possibility given that the President is 76 and reportedly ill.
But everything rests with Mr Suharto. Until now he always favoured Mr Habibie over his rivals but whatever the constitution says he may still have other plans for a successor.
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