The numbers were ugly, and Sumitro knew it the moment they
left his mouth. “So, roughly speaking, the waste and burnouts during Pelita V
were estimated to be around 30% of the total investment,” he said.
A bomb detonated in the halls of power. Maybe not the kind
that left bodies scattered in the streets, but the kind that made them shuffle
fast, whisper in dark corners, reach for the nearest exit. Thirty percent.
Eight trillion rupiah. A hemorrhage, not a leak. It was a word that turned
stomachs, a number that ate reputations whole. The government of Soeharto, the
unshakable, the immovable, suddenly wobbled like a drunkard on an oil-slick
floor.
Denials came in waves, thick and fast. Men in suits and
military garb, their faces set like granite, lined up in front of cameras, in
front of reporters, in front of God himself, and they swore it wasn’t true.
Sumitro had misspoken, misunderstood, miscalculated. He was mistaken, confused.
They needed him to take it back, smooth it over, make it disappear like a bad
dream in the light of morning.
But Sumitro Djojohadikusumo was not a man who dreamed
lightly, and he was certainly not a man who retracted the truth.
He was summoned. Of course, he was. He entered the palace
alone, the air thick with incense, with sweat, with something else. Fear. In
front of Soeharto, the man who had built his kingdom brick by brick, corpse by
corpse, Sumitro stood and spoke plainly. “A high ICOR signifies that our
country is still experiencing a high-cost economy. That’s why we need to bring
it down.”
He might as well have been speaking to a statue.
The months passed like slow poison. His words festered,
infected the bloodstream of the government. The old guard hated him for it, but
the younger ones—those who had only ever known a world under Soeharto’s
shadow—listened. Sumitro had seen it all before. He had fought economic wars,
danced the treacherous waltz of power and money. He had stood beside leaders
and watched them crumble. Sukarno. Soeharto. The men changed, but the ghosts
remained.
He had fought against nationalization in 1957, believing
that stability lay in Dutch investment. He had made enemies, powerful ones, but
he had never been afraid to stand in the storm. He had even warned his own
children, told them of the weight of history, of the bones buried beneath the
palaces.
Now, decades later, his son Prabowo stood at the helm,
staring into the abyss of his father’s unfinished work. The name Danantara
rang out like an old echo, like a ghost tapping at the window. It was Sumitro’s
idea once, back in the ‘80s, a whisper in a world that didn’t want to listen.
An independent investment agency, one that would pull from the coffers of the
state-owned enterprises and build something real, something lasting.
Prabowo was listening now.
At the inauguration of BPI Danantara, Prabowo spoke in
measured tones, his voice steady, but his hands gripped the podium like a man
holding onto the past. “Make no mistake, what we are launching today is not
just an investment fund, but an instrument—a national development tool that
must transform the way we manage the nation’s wealth for the prosperity of all
Indonesians.”
And in the crowd, there were those who nodded and those who
clenched their teeth. They had heard such words before, from other men, other
mouths. Some had gone on to carve legacies into stone. Others had simply
disappeared.
Minister Erick Thohir spoke next, reassuring the skeptics,
warning the vultures. “The funds do not come from private citizens’ deposits
but from the dividends of state-owned enterprises.” It was a promise, but in
the undercurrents of Jakarta, promises were like smoke—thick, intoxicating, and
gone with the wind.
Sumitro had wanted this. But had he wanted this?
Malaysia had done it, years before. Singapore before that.
The world was moving, and Indonesia had always been a step behind. Seventeen
years, Sumitro had once muttered. Seventeen years behind Malaysia.
He had whispered it in meetings, into the ears of ministers, into the night air
as he sat alone, watching the city he had tried to shape.
And now Prabowo, his son, carried the torch. But the old man
was no longer there to guide him. No longer there to warn him that power was a
beast with sharp teeth and hungrier shadows. That to touch it, to wield it,
meant knowing that it could turn on you at any moment.
Danantara stood as a monument, a promise, a gamble. Not a leak. Not a hemorrhage. Not this time.
And somewhere, in the spaces between past and present, a
ghost watched and waited.
Comments
Post a Comment