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Proliferating Portrait. By showing a firmer hand, Suharto is gradually becoming strong enough to cope with problems as numerous as Indonesia's 3,000 islands. Corruption remains a blot on Indonesian life, but Suharto is considering a housecleaning to try to root it out. Indonesia's politicians are often restive, but he has managed to keep them in line while also blocking any resurgence of the outlawed Communist party. Though he has broken with Peking, Suharto adheres to a neutralist, if slightly pro-Western, foreign policy, showing a sympathetic understanding of American objectives in Viet Nam while still retaining diplomatic ties with North Viet Nam.*
Though inflation still plagues Indonesia, Suharto is working hard to restore the climate for foreign investment, to draft a five-year plan and to win additional aid from Indonesia's nine major non-Communist creditors, who will meet in Amsterdam next week to decide how far they will go along with Suharto. One little example of Suharto's personal impact is the recent proliferation of his portrait throughout Indonesia. About the only place Sukarno's face still shows is on the old rupiah bills that his free-spending ways helped make almost worthless.
* Suharto discussed Viet Nam with visiting Vice President Hubert Humphrey in Djakarta last week. Contrary to initial reports, he did not offer to mediate the war, nor did Humphrey ask him to do so.