International Bad Boys Forced to Face the Fire

May 3, 2002 -- The silver spoon is being slowly wrenched out of his mouth and the famous Rolls Royce is now gathering dust in a Jakarta garage, but Tommy Suharto hasn't lost the bravura that has galled — and fascinated — Indonesians for years.

After more than a year on the run, the youngest and favorite son of Indonesia's former strongman, Suharto, is finally facing justice on several charges — including those relating to the murder of a Supreme Court judge — and Indonesians can't quite get enough of it.

Once the jet-set, womanizing, race car-driving, business-dealing bad boy of the vast Asian archipelago nation, Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra Suharto today resides in a Jakarta prison cell while the trial unfolds amid tight security and heightened media interest in a huge Jakarta exhibition hall.

The lead-up, the rumors and the allegations surrounding Indonesia's one-time crown prince has so captivated the nation, that Suharto's trial had to be moved from the Central Jakarta District Court earlier this year to the exhibition hall to accommodate the media, security personnel and gaping spectators.

And if his initial court appearances are anything to go by, Suharto may be in a stew, but his playboy image is intact. In Javanese print silk shirts, the 39-year-old is given to grinning and waving audaciously at reporters, many of whom have filed steamy copy on his much-publicized five-hour conjugal visits with his glamorous wife.

Suharto's story is a Shakespearean scale saga of family drama, greed, corruption, and the apparent immunity that spoiled brats of powerful daddies believe they enjoy.

But it's hard to associate Suharto with any Hamlet-like ruminations on the human condition. His conduct seems more in keeping with the early exploits of Prince Hal, the dishonorable tavern-frequenting, thief-befriending young man who would eventually become King Henry V.

Troubled Princes Across the World

Political systems may have changed since the 16th century, but even today, there is no shortage of Prince Hal-like characters across the world.

In countries enjoying a wide range of political systems — from despotic dictators to democratically elected, but crony-appointing leaders — children of heads of state have stretched and flouted the rules of the game for their own nefarious ends.

In the Balkans, millions of Serbs and Bosnians swap rumors on the whereabouts of Marko Milosevic, the smuggled goods-dealing, nightclub-frequenting, allegedly coke-snorting youngest son of Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

French eyebrows arch scalp high when the name Jean Christophe Mitterand pops up in conversations as the former French president Francois Mitterand's son battles probes into his alleged illegal arms trafficking.

And in the streets of Baghdad, Iraqis are known to quiver with fear when the white Mercedes, which Baghdadis associate with Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, makes its way around the streets of the Iraqi capital.

Click here for the family and business connections of playboy scions.

Fast Cars, Beautiful Women, Chic Nightclubs

They tend to favor fast cars, they have myriad, often shady business interests, they often display an insatiable fondness for beautiful women — and amazingly, given their often ordinary looks, they succeed in attracting these women — and across the board, they believe daddy will forever shield them from the long arm of the law.

That, of course, is a misjudgment for which Suharto, Mitterand and Milosevic are finally paying a price.

As his father faces war crimes charges at The Hague, 28-year-old Marko Milosevic is currently in hiding and rumors say he may either be in Russia, one of the former Soviet republics, or even in some remote part of Serbia.

Tales of Milosevic's exploits include racketeering and smuggling during and after the war years and an alleged connection with an attack on an opposition leader in March 2000.

French judges are currently investigating Mitterand's alleged involvement in a massive illegal arms trafficking scandal to Angola, and the son of the one of modern France's premiere statesmen was only released from prison last year after his mother, France's former first lady, Danielle Mitterand, put up $72,000 for his bail.

Mitterand has denied any wrongdoing, claiming, among other things, that $1.8 million paid to his Swiss bank account by an arms company was part of a legitimate consultation fee.

But "Mr. Africa," as he is sometimes known in a scathing reminder of his close relationships with a number of African leaders and the excessive secrecy he employed while informally conducting France's Africa policy, enjoys little public sympathy in France.

No Friends, Lots of Bodyguards

Sympathy is not an emotion associated with Saddam's brutal, rage-prone son Uday, whose laundry list of alleged crimes includes torture, rape and murder.

Although many experts tip the scale of criminal indulgences in Hussein's favor, comparisons between the sons of the former Serb strongman and the current Iraqi despot yield surprising similarities.

Unlike their fellow countrymen and women, for most of whom survival is a daily, all-encompassing struggle, these young men have been allowed to run amok in states that have been — or are — trapped under their fathers' tyranny.

Childhood accounts of the two young men paint pictures of a luxurious upbringing isolated from peers but surrounded by bodyguards and adoring officials, which most likely fueled a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

"It's difficult to generalize peoples' childhoods of course, but one can say that they grow up in such rarefied environments that it's hard for mere mortals to understand the stresses and strains of such privilege," says Dr. Bennett Leventhal, director of child psychiatry at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "It's like movie stars in our culture — the fame and power can distort one's sense of self."

Many members of the Iraqi opposition say Uday Hussein's displays of brute power are chronic. "Uday is a thug who is unable to control his violent rages and is unable to organize any support," says Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein of the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella of Iraqi opposition groups. "As children, Uday and [his younger brother] Qusay were taken to see tortures of traitors to toughen them up. They grew up surrounded by tales of betrayals, executions, torture, danger and paranoia."

Milosevic's childhood is also widely believed to have been a virtual paranoid passion play, albeit on a smaller scale. His mother, Mirjana Markovic, a hard-line former communist leader, is often called the Lady Macbeth of the Balkans, and many Serbs believe she was the driving force behind her husband's ruinous policies.

‘Papa Told Me’

While authoritarian regimes tend to provide fertile breeding grounds for modern-day Prince Hals, sometimes democracies can be stretched to accommodate them — for a while.

Speaking about Jean-Christophe Mitterand, who is known by his nickname papa m'a dit (papa told me), Veronique de Rugy of the Cato Institute believes he was essentially a product of the Mitterand years, a period she says, when a "bloated, socialist government held all power and everything was a matter of friendships and cronies and connections."

Mitterand junior was especially adept at milking France's controversial connections with its former colonies in Africa, says de Rugy. Critics of French African policies say France, in its efforts to maintain control in the continent, had close links and even propped several African despots.

Mitterand, according to de Rugy, exploited the secrecy in which France's Africa affairs were conducted "through his implicit connections because of his background."

A Creature of the Jakarta Elite

The business influence of the Suharto family during Suharto's 32-year reign is legendary. And four years after Suharto was ousted from power, analysts say the family continues to have large interests in vital Indonesian economic sectors.

But William Liddle, a political science professor at Ohio State University, says that even by Indonesian standards, the youngest Suharto's record has been too controversial for Indonesia's current president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, to ignore.

Suharto is currently facing charges for ordering the killing of Justice Syafiuddin Kartasasmita, a Supreme Court judge who was responsible for sentencing the young Suharto to 18 months for swindling the state out of $9.2 million in a real-estate scam.

Suharto went into hiding soon after the verdict, but prosecutors allege that while on the run, Tommy ordered Kartasasmita's murder. The judge was fatally shot five times at close range in July 2001. Defense lawyers, however, maintain the charges are baseless and witnesses were coerced to testify.

"The general understanding in Indonesia is that every judge can be bribed," says Liddle. "This case is a test of Indonesia's judiciary. If Tommy is found innocent, then I believe it will be a great embarrassment for the judicial system."

No Political Ambitions

But what intrigues Liddle is the fact that, unlike many scions of Asian political families, Suharto never had any political ambitions. "Suharto is very much a creature of the Jakarta elite climate," says Liddle. "The Suharto kids have participated in that world of nightclubbing and ecstasy popping and they show no signs of political ambitions."

The only Suharto child with political ambitions — Siti "Tutut" Hardiyanti Rukmana — is also noticeably the only one of the Suharto children to wear an Islamic headscarf. The former Indonesian strongman has six children, many of whom reaped vast fortunes while he was in power.

But citing reports of the ailing Suharto's health improving after a special visit by his youngest son earlier this year, Liddle says that scandals notwithstanding, Tommy continues to be his aging father's favorite child.

And if blame has to be apportioned for the sheer scale of Suharto's excesses, Liddle places it at the former dictator's door. "It's clear Suharto could not discipline his children," says Liddle. "I know for a fact that there have been complaints about them, but he always defended them."