Articles draw Marcos parallel

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 6

Articles draw Marcos parallel

By

CHRIS PETERS,

of NZPA Sydney The newspaper report that has so stung Indonesia and caused the latest rift with Australia deals with assets of between SUS 2-3 billion said to be owned by the family and associates of President Suharto. According to journalists with experience in Asia the allegations of corruption in the regime in Jakarta are not new — what appears to have stung the Indonesians is that the offending article drew a parallel with the former Philippine’s President, Ferdinand Marcos. The foreign editor of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” David Jenkins, made his allegations in an article on April 10. Jenkins, who spent six years in Jakarta as a correspondent for two different papers in the 19705, has written a book jon Indonesia’s military politics called “Soeharto And His Generals,” and was acknowledged on Tuesday night by the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Mr August Marpaung, as an expert on the country. He began his report by saying that as Philippine investigators peeled back

the covers on the hidden Marcos millions, Indonesians were asking new questions about assets piled up by the Suharto family and. business associates. Jenkins balanced his earlier reference to Mr Marcos by saying that the Indonesian President had rebuilt a nation which was on the verge of bankruptcy and given it a new direction and sense of purpose, built hospitals, roads, and tens of thousands of schools, huge new oil refineries and hydro-power plants, and more than doubled rice production.